People Used to Dream About the Future
by Calapine
Summary: The world ended sometime in March 2006. This is, of course, a lie. Just like everything else in this story. Nobody bothered to tell the Doctor, Jack or Rose though.
1. this is prologue

**People Used to Dream About the Future**

_"Torchwood? Why that's an anagram of…are you feeling fit Harry?"  
"Never felt fitter, Doctor"  
"Good. Now, Captain Harkness, you're going to lead us out of this institute of yours. "  
"Never."  
"You won't get an medal for being stupid, Captain. In fact, you won't be getting any more medals at all."  
- recorded on camera #A-063, time index 02/11/06 14:43_

If I were you, I wouldn't believe a word of this.

You'll find, you see, that under certain circumstances there was a runaway Time Lord who was snatched out of all his time streams in his fifth incarnation and forced to return home to play a game. A deadly game of course, where the stakes were not quite clear and the villain was not wholly expected. See how, at the end of the game, the most powerful figure in Time Lord history, Rassilon, the father of their great civilisation appeared before this renegade Time Lord. He was good and kind and fair and he did not interfere. He just sent them all home again.

(Other accounts will argue that Rassilon was a monster responsible for genocide on a universal scale, leading to the dominance of the humanoid form in almost all the galaxies of this universe.)

But it is this prodigal son that you and I are concerned with. For after he said farewell to his earlier selves, let us say that he did not run away.

Let us say that he became President.

There is, it is rumoured, a time stream in the Matrix that catalogued this event and showed that a human was sent home before she shattered into pieces and a Trion didn't manage to save his brother before he burned in a volcanic explosion and that the Time Lord as President would have been good and kind and fair and nothing that he ever did would have stopped the last great Time War.

Nature abhors a vacuum and sometime after the death of all the Time Lords and the death of all the Daleks, a great rip would have opened in space-time connecting normal space to E-Space and bringing home a lost Time Lord, and the last of her species.

She would have been brilliant and clever and witty. She would save planets, and civilisations and more than one plane of reality.

And, eventually, she would have given up.

(That didn't happen.)

Under other circumstances, the renegade went free, returning to his wandering ways for centuries and centuries and his race died quietly. So quietly that nobody noticed, not even him. It was only when there were handful left and Time was unravelling into brightly coloured fraying threads and twisting round and round into knots and jumbles that he paused.

Let us say that he used the last of his great power to cast down the well meaning Minister of Chance and his TARDIS.

Let us say that he left his companion to another Time Lord, ancient and dying, as he extinguished himself.

By all accounts the companion fought. Evidence of her exact activities is considerable and varied and contradictory. There is a curious record stating that not only did she take possession of a TARDIS but became a Time Lord in her own right. The last Time Lord, a human born of Earth and carried off into space by a time wind.

Such a thing is, of course, impossible.

And, in any event, eventually she would have died.

(That didn't happen either.)

The Doctor doesn't give up.

The Doctor doesn't die.

And the Doctor can never go home again.

Ah, and here he is now. See that little bob of blue on the time-tracks? How old his ship is, how worn, how tired. It's lucky the seas of time are calm (and why wouldn't they be?) else this poor TARDIS might be shaken into so many of its constituent parts.

Closer - ignore that cracked blue paint, it is a poor metaphor - and we can see inside. We can see him, standing there, still proud, still confident. Note the leather jacket, and do not believe for an instant that leather is any more effective an armour than any metal alloy.

This is the Doctor; this is our hero. When faced with injustice, he will not run, he will fight and at the end he will leave things better than what they were.

But he will leave.

Perhaps he is a coward, of sorts? Certainly there are those who held that opinion. But they are all dead now and quite unable to substantiate that hypothesis.

For the time being, let us not debate the point but consider him a hero in general and the protagonist of our tale in particular.

That girl who has just come in is a human. She is our heroine, though not, it should be emphasised, in the classical sense. Her name is Rose (a highly useful name for making any number of literary allusions and/or extended metaphors) and she has travelled with the Doctor for some time - relatively speaking, of course. Occasionally, she believes that she knows him. Infrequently, she believes herself in love with him.

She is quite wrong on one account.

The part she plays is to provide us with our way into the story. We must identify with her, we must sympathise with her. Shortly, we will discover her planet has been invaded and one would hope that you will empathise with her feelings about this event for it is your planet too.

The final companion in this little group is Jack. Former criminal, former Time Agent and missing two very important years of his life. The latter has no relevance whatsoever here, but one should not forget the important details.

He is sleeping at this very moment, and so our hero and our heroine who are very much not in love can share a moment of subtext without worrying about what it will look like to a third party.

We'll join them later. In an hour or so, after a particularly vicious argument.

Time passes so quickly nowadays, doesn't it? Here, listen, they've started…


	2. this is a bad idea

_The DOCTOR and ADRIC are in the CLOISTERS discussing how to remove the presence of the MASTER from the Tardis._

_DOCTOR: Materialise the Tardis underwater…and open the doors. (he smiles)  
ADRIC: I think that's a very silly idea._

_- extract from Logopolis, episode 2 (alterations unattributed)_

The Doctor had relented gracelessly, so Rose had walked out of the console room with her head held high, determined to stay in her own room until they arrived. She knew he didn't really like her Mum, but there was no need for him to make it so _obvious_. Nine hundred years of experience, and not an ounce of tact to show for it.

She flung herself onto her bed and looked around her room. It didn't have very much in it: the bag of stuff she'd quickly packed when she'd been home the last time, a few souvenirs from their travels and a dozen or more outfits she'd pilfered from the wardrobe room.

It didn't feel like home. She'd packed like she was going on holiday, but this was her life now and she just wanted a few more things that made her feel like this was her room, and not just part of a ship.

It was Jack who came to find her.

He knocked on the door before cautiously pushing it open and peering round the side. "Decent in there?" he asked.

"Like that'd stop you," said Rose. "We landed then?"

"London, early twenty-first century."

Rose rolled her eyes. "How early? I don't want to go wandering around in the twenty-twenties, thanks very much."

"You'd better ask him then."

Rose fixed him with a look. "There are some things he just doesn't get. Like family."

Jack sat down on the bed next to her, his expression serious. "I think he's more worried about your attachment to yours."

"What does he expect? That I just forget about Mum?"

"No, of course not." Jack shrugged. "He's scared that you'll leave him." He flashed a smile. "And that he'll be stuck with me."

"Oh, you'd just love that."

"Hell, yeah." He took her hand in both of his. "But I don't want you to leave either."

She sighed, exasperated. "I'm not! I just want to get some more stuff. Why is that such a difficult thing?" She stood up and grabbed a bag from the floor. "I'd better go. The quicker I'm back, the quicker we can go do the whole seeing the infinite wonders of the universe thing, and the Doctor can quit his sulking."

* * *

When Jack and Rose entered the console room the Doctor was lying on his back, head under the console. 

"Since we're stuck here, I'm going to make a few more serious adjustments to the spatial sensors," the Doctor said. There was a faint buzz and a deep blue light indicating that he was using his sonic screwdriver. The buzzing stopped. "So take as much time as you like."

Jack and Rose exchanged a glance.

"See you soon," she said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek and waltzing outside, rucksack flung over one shoulder.

Jack crouched down gingerly by the Doctor and poked him in the ribs.

"Ow!" said an offended voice. "What was that for then?"

"You didn't say bye!"

"Well, neither did she," he muttered. "Go check the local spatial grid and see if the interference has cleared up."

"Doctor-"

"Hey!" He slid out from under the console. "It's fine, alright? She's fine, I'm fine. Everything is just _fine_. Or it will be, by the time she gets back and has calmed down a bit."

"She wasn't the one who started an argument."

"Nah, she was the one who ran out of the room in a huff. Real mature." His head disappeared again. "Give her a couple of hours and she'll realise she was overreacting."

"Y'know, I don't think-"

"Good plan, Captain. Pass me the isomorphic scanner, yeah?"

"I'm going to go after her," said Jack, standing up. "She was pretty upset."

The Doctor sighed. "She won't thank you. Believe me, she needs to be on her own a bit. And I have been travelling with her a lot longer than you, if you recall?"

Jack hesitated, one hand hovering over the controls for the door. He sighed, relenting. "Right. But as soon as we're finished here-"

"She'll be back long before then. Guaranteed. You haven't seen the state of these sensors."

Jack sat back down with a thud and peered into the toolbox. "Isomorphic scanner, right?"

* * *

Outside, Rose closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath of London air. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but it was familiar, and the sun felt good on her face. At least the Doctor had chosen a nice day. She just hoped she wasn't about to walk in on her Mum when she was eighty years old. She decided to check a newspaper first, just to make sure the time wasn't too far out. 

The Doctor had, very inconveniently, landed on Tower Bridge. She'd have to get a bus home. It took her a moment to find her purse and check that, yes, she did have enough change.

It wasn't until she was halfway across the bridge that she realised what was wrong. She spun on her heel and stared around, watching, listening. How could she have been so blind? Sure she'd been away from home for a while, and visited a couple of different planets and a lot of different times, and there'd been that whole thing with the Doctor that meant she wasn't really concentrating on exactly where she was going especially when it was, more or less, a straight line, but _still_…

Where was everyone?

No cars, no people, no sound of any kind at all, not even a bird song.

London was dead.

Rose didn't panic. She took a good look around her and ran to the nearest newsagent's, tried the door and, finding it open, went inside to grab the nearest newspaper from the stand. The Daily Mail, and it reported nothing more dramatic on the front-page than a Royal scandal. She flicked through the first few pages, and nothing seemed like a clue. Moving through the rest of the tabloids and onto the broadsheets, and there was still nothing, nothing out of the ordinary. Politics, hospitals and some report about school rankings.

She checked the dates: 28th March 2005.

Well, at least the Doctor had managed to arrive in the right year.

The most sensible thing would be to go back now, tell the Doctor something was wrong and then they'd be able to sort it out. Get things back to normal. Just like they always did.

But Rose wasn't feeling all that sensible, and she was still annoyed at the Doctor. It would be a long walk to the Powell estate, but she was stubborn enough to do it, just to spite him. At the very least, she'd see more of London and might be able to work out what had happened. She did not think about what might have happened to her Mum. She did not think about what might have happened to Mickey.

It was the incongruous buzz of noise on the street outside that alerted her. It wasn't quite the sound of an engine, but sounded mechanical. High-pitched, almost like a fire alarm. The noise grew in intensity, began to stab inside her head, making it impossible to ignore.

She slammed her hands against her ears, but it did little to block out the noise. As quietly as she could, she made her way to the window, and crouched down behind the display, searching the street outside.

Then she saw him. On the first floor window in one of the houses opposite, the curtains were almost drawn close, but between them was the head and shoulders of another person, staring right at her. He raised a hand, waved just once, and then ducked out of sight.

Then the street exploded, and Rose felt herself flung back across the shop. She slammed into the far wall, and managed to dive under a stand of greetings cards before the shooting began.

It took her another second to realise that they weren't shooting at her. Something else, out on the street. And another noise, high-pitched, a flash of light and an explosion. She'd seen weapons like that before, but never in her own time. They weren't firing bullets, but bolts of energy.

She crawled closer to the window, keeping as close to the floor as she could, determined to find out what was going on.

People on the street. Bodies. Lying still. Victims of the explosion? Of the gunfire? The red bolts were coming from somewhere much further down the street, but she couldn't see that far. It seemed like they were coming out of no-where.

But there were people out there, and they were human. A dozen, perhaps more.

"That's enough," shouted one. "Get back to the vans. They'll be back soon enough and we'd better not be here."

Another, a man, scanning the fallen, spotted Rose and ran towards her. His weapon was not drawn. "Quickly, we must leave," he said. He smiled. "It's alright, we're human enough. Come on." The man grabbed her hand and Rose allowed herself to be led out onto the street.

"Tell them to make their choice," snapped another. A woman, perhaps she was in charge. She certainly seemed to be giving a lot of instructions.

"What choice?" asked Rose, but the man holding her hand who is not the Doctor shook his head and urged her onwards. She saw the vans at the end of the road. Three of them. Not quite right. Technology attached to the bonnets, the roofs, technology she did not recognise.

"Get in," the man told her, and Rose jumped through the open door at the back of the vehicle, and found herself amongst boxes filled with tins. She sat on the floor, the man was in the driver's seat at the front. A few minutes later others join them and the engine started up.

The woman, the one who had given orders sat next to Rose. "Where'd you come from then?" More an accusation than an inquiry. Rose decided to be careful.

"Got caught outside at the wrong moment," she said.

The woman nodded. "Heard about people still in the cities. Didn't really think it was true. Good for you." Perhaps the hint of a smile. "Sorry about blowing your cover."

"That explosion was you?"

"Wrong place, wrong time. Best way to take out a group. Only a few left for us to shoot down." She offered a hand. "Name's Livia."

"Rose."

Livia nodded, glanced through at the driver's cab. "You pair got stealth on?"

"Yeah, yeah," said the driver. "We'll be shielded before we reach the perimeter. Relax."

"They'll be after us."

"Not got enough power to keep it on for the whole trip. We're going to be taking the risk either way."

The man in the passenger seat turned, scowled. "They know we're here anyway."

Rose stayed quiet. All the questions she needed to ask would mean betraying she hadn't a clue what was going on. Best not to, best to stay safe till she could work it out.

* * *

Jack drank coffee black; the Doctor's mug, milky and with several sugars was untouched and had gone cold. It wasn't that Jack didn't understand how one could get caught up in their work, and he did like to watch the Doctor work, but a simple thank you wasn't much to ask for. 

"She's been gone a while," he said, just for something to say. Just to break the silence, hoping the Doctor would open up a little more.

"Yeah, well…" he tailed off. Still annoyed then.

The TARDIS shook.

Not dramatically, but quietly. Just a murmur. But it was enough to get the Doctor's attention. He was out and up from under the console and switching on the scanner. Jack leaned over his shoulder. Saw London on the screen. And a flash of silver. Something in the sky.

"That a ship?" he asked.

"Can't be. Wrong time." The Doctor adjusted the scanner, tried to track the object, but it was gone.

And then they were falling. Jack found himself flung across the console room, but the Doctor had somehow managed to attach himself to the console.

"Hold on!"

"To what?" Jack flung his hands back against the wall, bracing himself.

"The bridge has gone," he heard the Doctor mutter. "I didn't see anything…how could it…come on, old girl, give me some answers…"

A crash.

Jack felt like he could stand up again. "What happened?"

"What's happening," corrected the Doctor, "is that we're in the Thames and sinking fast."

"Can you dematerialise?"

"I hadn't finished reconnecting everything, so no. And even if I could…" He frowned, something on the console had caught his attention. "There's some sort of suppression field active. Right over London."

"It's interfering with the TARDIS?"

"Yeah…yeah. We might still be able to open a way into the Vortex, but we wouldn't be taking the external shell with us."

"Right. Let's go shut it down then."

The Doctor gave him a long look. "We're under water."

"She's water-proof, isn't she?"

"Not if we open the doors. And I don't know any other way to get out."

Jack was beginning to see the problem. "So what do we do then?"

"We open the doors."

"But you just said…"

"I know!" His expression was tight, his eyes fixed somewhere on the console. "But there's no other option. Rose won't know what happened and even if she did, she can't get in. And we can't dematerialise until that field's shut down."

"Couldn't you phone Rose?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Suppression field's not letting any mobile communications get through." He sighed. "You can swim, can't you?"

"Yeah."

"Great. Now help me shut the systems down. No point in doing more damage than necessary."

They moved round the console, Jack following the Doctor's instructions, lights blinking out.

Somehow the TARDIS seemed quieter once they had finished. As though she were sleeping.

"You'll have to hold your breath," said the Doctor. "The pressure'll be-"

"I know," interrupted Jack.

"You nervous?"

"Hell, yeah." He tried a grin. The Doctor smiled back.

"Right. Get back against the doors, I don't want to be smashed into the wall with the first gush of water." His hand hovered over the door controls. "You ready?"

Jack wondered if the Doctor wanted to him to try and talk him out of this. As ideas went, even as the Doctor's ideas went, it was right up there with surfing black-holes. Jack wished he'd suggested getting a drink first, but said, "As I'll ever be."

The Doctor opened the doors.

The water was very, very cold.


	3. this is the government in exile

_"There is no plot!"_

- repeated line, double entendre, (cf. "I can't make out the script.")

There were bodies in the water: bloated and long dead.

Jack kept his eyes open, his mouth closed, kicked as hard as he could. Broke the surface, gasping for air and looked for the Doctor. He was swimming for the shore and Jack followed suit.

"Didn't swallow any of it, did you?" The Doctor, helping him out of the water and onto dry land and wholly unperturbed by the gruesome sight that he too had presumably seen.

Jack refrained from any number of witty responses to the Doctor's question and simply said, "No."

"Something's wrong here."

"You think?" said Jack. He'd never spent much time in the early twenty-first century, but he was pretty sure London was meant to be a lot noisier than this.

"Rose must've noticed."

"Pretty independent girl. Probably wanted to find out what was going on for herself."

The Doctor was silent a moment. "Yeah, probably." He scrambled to his feet. "We'd better find some dry clothes, before you freeze to death."

"I'm fine."

"You're shivering."

Jack hadn't noticed. Now he couldn't seem to stop. "Better get a move on then." Dying of a chill definitely wasn't one of the glorious ends he had planned.

* * *

"You're going to wake up with a bad crick in your neck," someone whispered in her ear.

Rose's eyes opened. She was still in the van, still travelling fast. "Was I sleeping?"

"Looked like it," said Livia.

"Sounded like it," said the guy sitting next her.

Rose stretched as much as she was able, sat up, took a look out the window. Classic English countryside. It was even raining a little.

She rubbed her neck. Livia grinned. "Told you."

"You a doctor then?" Rose said lightly.

"Used to be. Still try to be."

"Oh. So we got out of London okay?"

The driver glanced over his shoulder. "Easy as pie."

"And where're we going?"

"Why, to our top secret headquarters, of course," Livia told her.

* * *

There was someone else in the warehouse.

Jack and the Doctor were being very quiet. It was something that they were both very good at.

A shadow was moving closer and, despite no telepathy on the part of one and a very limited useless sort on the part of the other, a single look between them was all that was required. Never underestimate non-verbal communication.

Jack provided the distraction, diving from one man-high pile of boxes to the other. The shadow stopped and the Doctor tapped its source neatly on the shoulder. "Excuse me," he said, very politely. "Are you looking for us?"

The shadow turned out to be all military uniform and stiff-upper lip. "As a matter of fact, yes," he said.

"Haven't got a change of clothes, have you? My friend over there's pretty cold and I'm none too snug myself. And we could do with a decent cup of tea."

"Doctor-"

"Aha!"

The military man frowned. "I told you, I was looking for you. We saw what happened on the bridge. Damn stupid place for you to materialise."

"I'm very sorry, I wasn't expecting to be shot at. You didn't shoot at me, did you?"

"No-"

The Doctor ignored him. "S'alright, Jack, come out. He seems to be pretty harmless - apart from the gun - and not trying to kill us."

Jack appeared, but kept his distance, just incase. "Great. So who is he then?"

"I'm standing right here."

"Good for you," said the Doctor. "Who are you?"

"Sergeant Conrad, and I've been ordered to escort you to safety."

"Why? What's so dangerous? What happened here? Why are there dead bodies in the Thames?"

"That's not my job to explain, _sir_." He ground out the last word, somehow managing to make it an insult. "All I have to do is get you back to the bunker. Alive if possible."

"Is there tea in this bunker?"

"As a matter of fact, there is."

The Doctor smiled. "Well, let's go then."

"Not until you and your friend understand a few things. I tell you to get down, you get down. I tell you to shut up, you shut it. Understood?"

"Perfectly," said the Doctor, and somehow that came out as a threat.

"Good. Now stay here. I have to check the route's clear." Conrad slipped away into the shadows, and Jack stepped closer to the Doctor.

"Pleasant guy," he said.

The Doctor shook his head, his expression quite serious. "I think he's got a good reason to be. So behave, right?"

"Don't I always?"

* * *

Dark and they were heading underground. Had been for some time. Dark outside, and they didn't bother with headlights, though there was some luminescence coming from the walls every few metres. Rose felt almost unbearably claustrophobic.

When the van stopped there was a flurry of activity. Everyone was up, quick-march, and dragging the boxes out and onto the floor.

They were in a cave, part of a system and from the other exits more people came. Taking the boxes away. Voices were hushed, conversation guarded. Still, something of an air of celebration.

Rose took a better look inside one of the boxes. It was filled with cans of Heinz baked beans. She frowned, and didn't notice she was being watched.

"You okay?" asked Livia.

"I…" Rose shook her head. "Yes, course I am."

"Something wrong with Heinz then?"

"No…it's just…" She stopped, took a breath. "You were risking your lives for cans of baked beans?"

"Not likely to get very far without food, are we?"

"Who are you, exactly?" asked Rose. "I've not had any sort of explanation."

"You never asked for any."

"Well, I'm asking now. Who are you people?"

Livia took a step closer. "Guess," she said quietly.

"What?"

"Guess, Rose. Pretend it's a game and guess."

"This is stupid." Rose decided that she didn't like baked beans very much at all anymore.

"Who attacked us in the street? Who were we shooting at?"

Rose shook her head, fighting a sudden instinct to run. There were too many of them. She had no idea where she was. The Doctor had no idea where she was.

She wasn't going to panic.

Livia's hand was on her shoulder, but it wasn't a threat. She look concerned. "It's alright. You scanned as human, you're safe here. But you don't know, do you?"

Rose hesitated a moment. Too long from Livia's look. The truth suddenly seemed very appealing. "I just arrived. We materialised on Tower Bridge and the Doctor…I just wanted some time on my own, I didn't have any idea we weren't somewhere safe. This is home. It's supposed to be safe. My home, and I don't have a clue what happened. I'm sorry, I just…people generally seem a bit hostile towards us, and if I didn't know what was happening, it's obviously suspicious and I wasn't really wanted to get shot at again and-"

"Rose, Rose, it's alright." She seemed a little paler. "Now, please, how did you get here?"

"I doubt you'd believe me."

"You said something about the Doctor."

"I, yeah, I guess I did." It was even quieter now, most of the boxes had disappeared and so had most of the people. "He's got this ship. The TARDIS-"

Livia interrupted. "Come with me."

* * *

"This certainly is a big secret underground bunker," said the Doctor. "Have you many of them? Very useful for invasions." He was feeling a lot better after a cup of tea, and Jack was looking a lot better in some dry clothes. Less blue and shivery, anyway.

"This way," said the sergeant in the most bored voice he could manage.

The Doctor knew about a lot of the stuff that was underground in London. The Underground for one. But he had to admit he wasn't aware of quite how far underground certain things were. Admittedly, it had been three decades since he was last paying any proper attention to what was going on on a day-to-day basis in the United Kingdom, but thirty years wasn't really a terribly long time.

The British certainly had been busy little bees. Or beavers. He liked beavers better. He wasn't so keen on alliteration.

There were an awful lot of soldiers though. Looking very fierce. He waved at one; the soldier didn't wave back.

Another elevator, another floor down. The sergeant stopped outside the only door on the new level. "You're to go right in," he said.

"Who's in there?" asked the Doctor.

The sergeant grinned. It wasn't pleasant. "The government in exile. Good luck."

When the elevator left with him in it, the Doctor noticed that there wasn't a call button for this floor. "Wonderful," he muttered.

"We going in then?" asked Jack.

"Either that, or we can stand about here and play Twenty Questions." He glanced at Jack. "No. We're not doing that."

Jack shrugged, opened the door. Nice and bright on the other side. Somehow the Doctor had expected something a little more ominous, a little more foreboding.

He was rather surprised to see a familiar face. "Doctor, do come in," said Harriet Jones. "Can I get you a coffee?"

Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, managed to disguise what she was feeling behind a smile that most politician's would have killed for. Or at least engaged in a little creative corruption. It wasn't the Doctor that she was expecting, but then her companion, now sitting on the sofa opposite her chair, had explained that one once.

She settled on being glad that she could ignore any potential awkwardness that could have come about had he been aware of exactly what had happened at Christmas, and offer him a coffee instead.

"And Mr Harkness, I believe?" she added.

"Captain, actually. But Jack's fine."

The Prime Minister nodded, ushered them inside, poured the coffee. For a few moments, she allowed herself to believe that all her problems would very soon be over.

Then the Doctor noticed Harriet wasn't the only familiar face in the room.

"Hello, Brigadier," he said, taking a hand, shaking it warmly. They were best friends after all. He was sure that he had said that, once.

"Doctor. I see you've regenerated again." The same voice, a little more worn. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was an old man now and were it not for his eyes the Doctor would have been very afraid for his oldest friend. It took some skill for a Time Lord to be friends with a human for the better part of a millennium. And somewhere along the line the Doctor had begun to think of the Brigadier as immortal. It was a very silly thing to do.

The Brigadier looked at Jack. "I take it this is the latest one."

"Of two," said the Doctor. He sat down and took a long drink of coffee. "Well, this is nice and cosy, isn't it? Nice little reunion."

"I wish it could have been under more pleasant circumstances," said Harriet. "Doctor, we need your help."

"And I need yours. Rose has gone missing. You remember Rose, don't you?"

"Of course. I'll do everything I can. But as you might have noticed, things aren't quite normal."

"Yeah, I did. So what happened, Prime Minister?"

Harriet and the Brigadier exchanged a glance. She leaned forward. "It was brought to my attention a few months ago that we had been sending probes deeper and deeper into space. That in our curiosity, we were, perhaps, reckless. We had drawn attention to ourselves."

"The last attack - the Christmas invasion - ended satisfactorily, for us anyway" interjected the Brigadier. "Although there was some controversy over the means that brought about its resolution."

"But the ends justify the means, eh, Brigadier?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

"My first duty is, and always has been, to protect the people of Earth."

"Shoot first, think later."

"Well, we are only human," said the Brigadier, quite calmly.

"All right then. What went wrong this time?"

"Nothing," said Harriet. "The major cities were evacuated and UNIT did exactly what they were trained to do. "

"There were some setbacks prior to the invasion though. Some sort of security breach at one of the organisations that was, ah, complementing UNIT's defence of the planet." The Brigadier sipped his coffee. "We simply didn't have the technology or resources to fight back."

"So who are they?"

The Brigadier gave a ruthful smile. "I'm sure you'll recognise them," he said, handing the Doctor a stack of eight by ten glossy photos.

"I know I do," said Jack. "Don't remember anything about a twenty-first century invasion though."

"Time is very flexible," the Doctor told him, examining the top photo. Staring back at him were two blank holes where eyes should have been and a face that shone silver. Humanoid, but not human. A Cyberman. The Doctor looked at the Brigadier. "But UNIT were prepared for a second Cyber-invasion. Or, at least, they were ten years ago."

The Brigadier nodded. "But we expected nothing on this scale. It's not just the home counties this time. Every major capital has been crippled by power suppression fields. Every country has the camps and the conversion factories. We're barely managing to keep our city-wide underground infrastructure intact. Communications throughout the country are patchy at best and it's been months since we've heard from even the continent."

"So what do you want me to do?" asked the Doctor.

Harriet leant forward. "How can we win against them, Doctor?" she asked. "How can we take back our planet?"

* * *

"Get out of my way," snapped Livia.

She had practically run through the cave system, a warren of tunnels and wider, open spaces full of boxes and people and tables and beds. Most were wearing uniforms, but no-one had challenged them until now.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," said the soldier, "but the general is in conference."

"Oh, please, she's talking to Professor Shaw. Again. And whatever they're planning this time, I doubt it will help any more than the bio-mechanoid virus. Which, by the way, I said was a stupid idea."

"Ma'am, please!"

Livia feigned tripping and ducked under the soldier's rifle, dragging Rose with her. "Sorry!" she called back, dashing down the tunnel.

"This is okay, right? This general isn't going to shoot me or anything?" asked Rose.

"No, she's going to be thrilled to see you actually. If only by proxy."

It wasn't exactly a door. More a roughly shaped piece of wood dividing one part of the tunnel from the next. Livia swung it open, and the tunnel opened out into another, smaller cave.

Two women, talking quietly over a desk, suddenly went quiet.

The younger - dark-skinned, short hair and in uniform - scowled in a way that made Rose think it was probably her favourite expression. And that she practiced it in front of a mirror. "Livia, if you're going to charge in here uninvited, at least try and remember to knock first."

Livia seemed not to hear. "This is Rose."

The general rolled her eyes. "I don't need to be introduced to every stray you bring in."

"She knows the Doctor."

The second woman, red hair going to grey, took off her glasses and sighed. "Don't we all?"

"_Now_. She just arrived a few hours ago; she arrived in London with the Doctor. He's here. On Earth."

The general was on her feet, staring hard at Rose. "So why isn't he here?"

"I only found out about that a few minutes ago," said Livia.

"People tend to threaten us a lot," explained Rose. "I was just being careful."

"Where is he now?" asked the general.

"I'm not answering any more questions until you tell me what's going," said Rose. "Starting with who you lot are. And who you're fighting."

"Look, you-"

"Can I get you a cup of tea?" interrupted the older woman. "Come and have a seat, you look exhausted."

"Thanks," said Rose, pretending not to notice the general give another roll of her eyes.

"Here you go."

Rose wrapped her fingers round a warm mug and suddenly felt a lot better.

The older woman sat down beside her. "Now, to answer your questions. My name's Elizabeth Shaw and that's General Winifred Bambera. We both used to be members of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce."

"UNIT," said Rose. "Yeah, I've heard of it. But what happened to London?"

They told her.

* * *

The Doctor was beginning to wish he hadn't asked for more details. He was tired; he was irritable; he couldn't stop thinking about Rose.

"I'm not a soldier," he told them. Not anymore, he didn't add.

"We were hoping for a more scientific solution," said the Brigadier. "There're survivors, there's a resistance, but we can't hold out forever."

"What you need is a more effective way to fight back." Jack hadn't said much, but he had been listening. Now he started talking. A lot. And the Brigadier and Harriet seemed very interested in what he had to say.

After a few minutes, the Doctor stood up and wandered away a little. They let him, or maybe they didn't notice.

He didn't like it here. He'd stayed on Earth so much, but something about this place, about now, crawled at his skin. He felt like he shouldn't be here at all.

The rumble of conversation grated in his ears. The noise seemed to scratch inside his skull. Stupid human. Stupid, stupid human.

"Alright, that's enough," he said. They were quiet. "What d'you know about Rose? Your lot found me quickly enough, you must have seen her."

"We did," confirmed Harriet.

"And?"

She sat back, resting comfortably. "Not until you help us."

He slammed his hands into the back of his chair, shoving it forward, hitting the coffee table. "Not good enough."

"Doctor." The Brigadier, a warning: behave, Doctor.

The Prime Minister's composure didn't change. "I cannot put the safety of one girl ahead of the nation, or the planet."

"It's alright, Doctor." Jack stood up. "I think I can make a difference here. The technology's primitive but they've managed to steal some stuff from the Cybermen. I think it could be enough for me to design a primitive glitter gun."

"What an extraordinary name," said the Brigadier.

"They were the crucial factor in the interstellar Cyberwars," Jack told him. "They're more effective than gold-tipped bullets and use up a fraction of the gold in ammunition."

The Doctor was very still. "You know what you're suggesting, right? You understand the chance you're taking?"

Harriet stood up. "If it turns the tide of this war, then it has to be worth the risk, whatever it is."

"It's interfering with the time-line," said the Doctor. "It might very well destroy your little planet."

"We've gotten our hands on advanced weapons before," said the Brigadier. "And we've been through invasions before. We'll do whatever's necessary.."

"So Jack's going to introduce you to this brand new alien-killing weapon, centuries ahead of what you've got, and then, when you've finished killing Cybermen, you're just going to happily give them up?"

The Brigadier gave him a steady look. "It's been done before."

* * *

Rose felt rather sick. The tea had stopped helping some time ago.

She was absurdly grateful that Professor Shaw - that Liz - hadn't left her side. Found herself sitting in the chair, resisting the urge to curl herself into the ball, holding the other woman's hand, unsure why: she didn't exactly give off a maternal air.

"Just one other thing," Rose said, very quietly. "In London, there were a lot of people hurt. Livia said, you said, they had to make a choice…" She trailed off, looking from one face to the other.

None of them wanted to answer the question.

"They had been injured," said Bambera finally.

"What choice?" insisted Rose.

Livia sat next to her, spoke gently. "You have to understand, Rose, that there was nothing else that could be done. The shots that hit those people paralysed them within minutes. They were going to be captured by the Cybermen, and anyone captured is put in the camps. They…they make us like them."

"But why couldn't you take them with you?"

"The shots held a tracking agent. It goes directly into the bloodstream. First step in cyberisation: know where your victims are." She paused, glanced at Bambera. "We can't let them have any more troops if we can prevent it; we're fighting for our lives here. Everyone on the supply runs knows the risks: you get hit, then you can take your gun and shoot yourself, or one of the others will do it for you."

Rose shook her head. "How could you?"

Bambera stepped forward. "Because it's what I would want. It's what any one of us would want. You haven't seen them. Or what happens when they strip away your dignity, your humanity, and turn you into some soulless machine who'll gun down anything they're ordered to: children, the wounded, the dying. It doesn't matter to them."

A knock at the door. A blonde-haired man, dressed like a soldier but wearing a highly incongruous sword. "Winifred," he said. "We must evacuate immediately. The invisibility magic did not work, one of their great flying ships is on its way here."

Bambera nodded. "Alright Ancelyn, you know what to do."

"My lady."

Bambera turned to Livia. "Get her out of here, get back to London and find the Doctor."

"On my own?" asked Livia doubtfully.

"I need my troops here to evacuate the civilians."

"Don't I get any say in this?" asked Rose.

"No," said Bambera shortly. "Now move. Professor, the labs."

"On it."

Rose hesitated, but as Bambera's eyes fell on her again she really didn't think she had the stubbornness left to argue. She'd been here a few hours; these people had lived like this for months. Besides, didn't she want to go back to London? That was where the Doctor was after all. 


	4. interlude: guns don't kill people

_Drinking in the bar, and strangers till a few hours ago. One of them ordered a round, launched into another old story. "Heard this one, back on Terra Alpha, couple of years ago. There was this little guy who turned up one night, night of the Fall, called himself the Doctor. Apparently he had something to do with bringing down the old regime. Anyway, he said to this sniper that was pointing a gun at him, he said, "Look me in the eye. Pull the trigger. End my life." Then the sniper, he couldn't do it, like. He just couldn't do it. Didn't know why either. And he just threw away his gun. That sniper, he could have stopped the whole revolution right then, but he didn't. Trained killer, and couldn't shoot some stranger. He brought down the whole government, he did."_

"Bloody coward," said the man to his left.

"A good man," said the other, sitting to his right.

- from Adventures for Young Spacers, pub. 2625 (Old Earth Enterprises Ltd)

So how many people have lied so far?

That, of course, is a rhetorical question designed to make you consider who is telling the truth and who is not.

(And this is not to say that anyone has deliberately attempted to mislead any of our heroes.)

You should consider exactly what a lie is (though don't feel obliged - one could argue that this entire passage is irrelevant, so feel free to skip to the last paragraph or two; there is a plot point there). Perhaps you would tell me that it is when one is not telling the truth. Thus leading us neatly into the far more difficult question of what the truth is.

Objectivity, subjectivity, philosophy and religion. If we started to discuss that question I think one of us would be dead before a satisfactory conclusion could be reached , and I can assure you that I would not be the aged corpse.

So let us instead take an example. Let us demonstrate an instructive point and gain a little more insight into one of the players. The Doctor, our illustrious hero, (though he has, so far, merely been reacting to events as opposed to instigating them; naturally this will change) is one in whom we should certainly not have our faith shaken. Yet he has told his old friend and his new friend that he is not a soldier. He did not tell them that he used to be. This is the lie of omission.

Some time, long ago, he called himself a scientist.

Time, as the Doctor has said, is very flexible. But we won't be going back that far. No, a few weeks only should be quite sufficient. Listen carefully, and you'll hear the time-streams rushing by:

Rose was almost certain that it was a fluke she had managed to find the Doctor so quickly. And until that moment she hadn't even been aware that the TARDIS had a laboratory.

"You really are a doctor then?" she asked, hovering at the doorway.

The Doctor looked up from the lab bench, put the circuit board to one side. "It's mostly honorary."

"So what's with all this stuff?" And there was an awful lot of stuff, pouring out of the cupboards and across the floor. A wonder he could find anything amidst the clutter. He'd probably claim it was some sort of highly advanced system of organisation that her little ape mind couldn't possibly comprehend.

"Just because I haven't got a bit of paper telling me I've passed some exam or other doesn't mean I can't show a healthy interest in the sciences," he told her, folding his arms. Defensive.

She bit her lip, then decided to press on. "Is that what you are? What you were…back home? You were a scientist?"

"That's what I trained as, yeah. Where d'you think the anti-plastic came from?"

Rose shrugged. "Don't know. Didn't even think about it. Doesn't sound very science-y though. I mean, anti-plastic?"

"Hey! It does it exactly what it say on the label. I suppose you'd have been more impressed if I'd given you its convoluted unintelligible chemical name?"

"I did get through GCSE science, you know."

"Didn't actually. Don't think that would have helped you much anyway."

"Thanks a lot." She picked up a test-tube.

"Careful," said the Doctor, plucking it carefully from her fingers. "Some of this stuff is really dangerous."

"So you just leaving it lying around?"

"Well, yeah, there weren't any daft apes wandering around my ship until a few weeks ago."

She took a closer look at one of the cupboards, glass door and full of organic-looking specimens."Bit odd really. I mean, it looks like Frankenstein's laboratory."

"That just means it has personality. I suppose you'd prefer if it was all white and shining and stripped of its soul?"

She nodded at the lab-bench. "Test-tubes? Petri dishes? This is the sort of stuff I used at school."

"Never underestimate a good education."

"Not very tech though, is it?"

"I _like_ it like this! It's tactile, it's real! Bet you'd just love those stuffy old labs back on…"

"Back on?"

"Never mind. Doesn't matter."

"Doctor?"

"Just leave it, yeah?"

A long moment. A long drawn out moment that gave her plenty of time to leave. "Is that all you were, Doctor, a scientist?"

"S'all I wanted to be."

"You weren't…you were never a soldier were you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"You told me about the war, Doctor. And if it was a devastating as you say, there must have been, I don't know, some sort of conscription or something…"

He stared at her. Eyes hard. "Oh yeah?"

"And the way you walk, and that way you have of speaking to people sometimes."

"You know a lot of soldiers then?"

"Nah, I just watch a lot of telly."

He almost smiles, but then he speaks. "Yes, I fought in the war. Didn't want to. Didn't want anything to do with it."

He shut down, turned away. Rose took the hint and left, and I don't believe that they ever spoke of the matter again. But he did tell her the truth.

Soldier, scientist, explorer, magician. Oh, and wizard! One mustn't forget the times that the Doctor has played Merlin (and, indeed, he will once again). All different faces of the same man, and of a man who has many different faces. Is presenting one face whilst obscuring the others a lie? Is that a lie of omission?

So the Doctor was a soldier. And even when he wasn't he has killed. Never callously, never maliciously never carelessly, but he has killed.

And it's always easier after the first time.

Right now - relatively speaking, of course - Rose is an innocent. She has never taken another sentient's life, by action or inaction. Oh, would the universe be so kind as to let it remain so, it would surely be a better place for us all.

See her now, she's running. Following Livia as she leads the way through this labyrinth of tunnels. If they are to escape they must reach one of the caves being used as a garage. Find one of those charming vehicles with a fossil-fuel combustion engine, and, one would hope, some form of stealth technology attached.

It cannot be terribly comforting that most everyone else seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

Still let us press on. Now, dramatic tension as such is a very dated concept. Viewing the matter outside of the linear timeline - which you can't, being somewhat limited to experiencing one moment after the next and each in order. How tedious.

So I shall tell you that Rose does make it out of the cave system.

But not safely, no, not at all. See how they're stumbling? The rocks above them are beginning to shake themselves free too. And if we were to move up and out of this place and back to the surface of the planet, we should see a low-flying spaceship sending a barrage of high-energy plasma bombs into the hillside.

There will be several cave-ins, but the only one that concerns us is the one that separates Rose from Livia. Rose, after all, is our heroine. What do we care for the fate of those she interacts with? Her safety must surely be our first concern.

She is alone now. Cut off from her guide, and no idea how to escape the cave system.

But they will find her. Those great silver giants with their superior strength and technology and, one could argue, intelligence. At the very least, they manage to prevent their emotions - more or less - from interfering with their intellect. Whether that is an advantage or disadvantage I leave it to you to decide.

Rose is not the only one who is taken, but it is her path that we shall follow. 


	5. this is a trio of meetings

_"Oranges and lemons  
Say the bells of St Clements  
You owe me five farthings  
Say the bells of St Martins  
When will you pay me?  
Say the bells of Old Bailey  
When I grow rich  
Say the bells of Shoreditch  
When will that be?  
Say the bells of Stepney  
I'm sure I don't know  
Says the great bell at Bow  
Here comes a candle to light you to bed  
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head  
Chop chop chop chop the last man's head!"_

_- Traditional children's rhyme_

The Doctor was now very much of the opinion that Sergeant Conrad did not possess, nor had ever been in possession of, a sense of humour. Two hours running like rats through London, and the man was doing nothing but growing increasingly pale and nervous. And he'd gone from outright hostility at the Doctor's humour to barely acknowledging he was there at all.

Stress, thought the Doctor, was a particularly insidious creature.

It looked like a film-set for a post-apocalyptic horror, the street that would set the scene, and the Doctor hoped fervently that Rose was not amongst that rubble. A newspaper fluttered in the wind and he snatched it up, taking a look at the date, the headlines.

"Supply crew came here," said the Sergeant. "Guess they got shot up pretty bad. They don't usually go for the high explosives. Supply's too limited."

"You lot saw Rose here though?"

The Sergeant scowled. "Spotter reported a young, blonde girl walking the streets alone in broad daylight. No-one asked her her name."

"At ease, Sergeant," the Doctor muttered. He stuck his hands in his pockets, spun around, looking. "What happened to the bodies?"

"Cybermen took them. Dead or alive, they'd have picked them up. Not sure what they do with the corpses."

The Doctor's gaze passed over the first floor of the building opposite the newsagent, his attention caught by the sun glinting off the window panes. The intact window panes. The very clean, very intact window panes.

A shadow on the pane. Some trick of the light, perhaps. But there was something darker at the back of the Doctor's mind. Something waiting.

"Stay here," he said to Conrad.

The Sergeant grunted. "If you're not back in fifteen minutes, you're on your own."

The Doctor found the door of the building unlocked, shoved it open and raced up the stairwell to the first floor. Flats. One or two - he had looked in both windows from the street below.

He picked the one with the green door, and didn't bother to knock before barging in.

Wrapped in rags, sitting twisted in a corner by an old gas stove was an old man. He coughed as the Doctor entered, struggled to his feet, offered his visitor a grubby hand.

"Don't often get visitors," he said, his voice cracked. "Come in, come in. I'm making some cocoa. Good cocoa. Waste of gas." He coughed again. "But I won't be needing the heat for much longer, suppose." He sat, pouring milk into a small pot. "Not good," he said, shaking his head. "Powdered, y'see."

The Doctor tried to relax, said the first thing he could think of: "I'm the Doctor."

"Course you are, course you are. Called for one of those right before they came, y'know. Didn't do any good. Do even less good now. Have some cocoa." He poured the heated milk into a mug, added two heaped teaspoons of cocoa powder from another tin. "Always preferred heating it over a Bunsen burner, but needs must."

"I don't…" Then he thought better of it, sat down on the other side of the stove from the tramp, took the proffered beverage and teaspoon. Stirred. "I thought London had been evacuated."

"Has been, son. Not going to bother an old man like me though, are they? Logical, they are. Good, cold logic. No point coming for one old man they can't even convert when there're packs of humans out there in the countryside, roaming free, stirring up all the trouble they can."

"So you were here when the supply team passed through yesterday?" He took a sip of the cocoa. It tasted just fine.

"I was. Saw them give a good fight. Got themselves out too." He paused. "And the girl in the newsagent's. Almost got blown up, she did."

The relief was palatable, but the Doctor didn't change his expression. "They got her out too?"

"They did."

He took a gulp of cocoa, and, yes, it did taste much sweeter now. "You have any idea where they went?"

A sly smile appeared on the old man's face. "That important to you, is it?"

"Yes."

"Ahhh."

The Doctor frowned. Put down his mug. "What do you want?"

"I want you to finish your cocoa. Have a chat with an old dying man. That's all." He sniffed. "Not much to ask for, is it?"

"No," said the Doctor, chastened. "I'm just-"

"-worried about your friend. And you're not the first." He fished a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, handed it to the Doctor. He smoothed it out, cast his eyes over the rough drawn scrawls, the barely legible labels. "They told me where to get to them. Just incase I ever wanted to leave. Still help any I find that get cut off in the city. Wrote it down. Memory's not too good these days."

"Thank you."

"S'not your real problem. There's a sensor grid round the city perimeter. Tells them when anything moves in or out."

The Doctor nodded. "If the supply team came in, they must have some sort of stealth technology."

"Stolen back when they used to get a few wins against the Cybermen. Just so happens…" The old man gave a toothy smile. "Just so happens I've a working unit with me. Been trying to repair an old one for weeks and no luck, but this one, this one I got a hold of quite recently, in fact. Perfect working order."

The Doctor finished his cocoa. "There's a soldier outside. You should go with him. He can help you."

"No, Doctor, I'm quite content here. Probably a lot safer too than with any soldiers still about." He stood, shoved aside a few boxes in the corner, dragged out a large silver component. "Heavy, still you seem a strong young man. Enough to get a vehicle through the barrier anyway."

The Doctor moved to lift up the stealth shield. The old man was right - he wouldn't be able to run with it, but so long as he could find a car to borrow, he'd be just fine.

"How long have you been living here?" he asked.

"Weeks, months. Better than the streets. Not home though, but I make do. We all do, really." He shuffled to the door. "You've got what you came for. Don't think I don't know you're just dying to run off, go be a hero for that young girl of yours. Off you go then, Doctor. And you take care of yourself."

The Doctor heaved the stealth unit up and under his arms. "Thanks," he said. "For your help, and the cocoa, thank you."

He paused in the doorway, giving a farewell nod and looking into the old man's eyes.

There was something. Something more than the convenience of the situation. Something he felt like he was forgetting.

And outside, Sergeant Conrad was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

"Wake up!" 

Someone was shaking her. God, she was so tired, why couldn't they see that?

"Come on, come on!"

Wasn't her Mum. Wasn't the Doctor. Not even Mickey - not like he'd actually be the one to wake her up. Probably wouldn't even bother getting out of bed if he could help it.

The slap across her face did it though.

She was on her feet, her hands balled into fists, but caught off-guard by the pale white face and frightened eyes staring back at her.

But not frightened of her, frightened _for_ her.

"Come on," she said again, grabbing Rose's hand and pulling her through the dimly lit room.

Room? It seemed to go on forever, the darkness, the silence pressing down on them. An echo, like a warehouse. Metal. A faint silver gleam from the walls.

A bright light from the open double-doors at the end.

But once they were out - white bright corridors, burning her eyes - her strange guide didn't slow down.

"Where we going?" asked Rose, disorientated, out-of -breath, trying to work out where she was.

"Mess hall."

The next open doors gave way to another room that Rose suspected was as large as the one they had just left. But this one was filled with people.

The doors slammed shut behind them with a metal clang, and they joined the queue leading to the opposite end of the hall. Hatches people were moving past.

"What the hell was that about?" insisted Rose.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Fat lot of thanks that is for saving your life."

"I don't…" Rose stopped, trying to decide which questions were most important. "I'm Rose," she said finally. "Thank you."

"No problem. I'm Tegan." They shuffled a little further along the queue. "So what happened to you? You were a heck of a lot more out of it than most."

"Can't really remember much," said Rose, thinking back. "I was…was with some people. We were trying to get away from…from _them_. Think something hit me on the back of the head."

"Yeah, well, you'll be alright here. For a while at least. Plenty of food and people to talk to anyway." She grimaced, and Rose thought she could detect a faint Australian twang in her accent. "Though they're pretty strict about where you are and when." She tapped her neck, and Rose noticed the silver gleam there: a metal collar.

She touched her own neck. She was wearing one too. "So what would have happened if you hadn't woken me up?" she asked, very carefully.

Tegan gave her a tight smile. "Probably best to tell you before you have something to eat."

"You don't have to give the grisly details."

"Right. Well, in that case: boom."

"Boom?"

"Yep." She looked away. "Though to a couple to people that seemed like a better option."

"Better option than this?" asked Rose quietly. Tegan nodded. "Where are we? What is this place?"

"Camp 107, designated non-conversions. Catchy, isn't it?"

They were at the hatches now, but Rose couldn't see through them, though there were plastic bowls full of some sort of thick gruel being passed out.

Tegan took her bowl, waited for Rose before they moved to one of the long benches lining the hall. They sat. Tegan picked the stumpy plastic spoon from her bowl, began to eat.

"Dig in," she said. "It doesn't look much, but it's inoffensively bland and pretty filling."

Rose took a reluctant mouthful, staring round the room from beneath her eyelids. There was a low hum of conversation, a steady, dull drone. No particular dress code - a lot of clothes looking the worse for wear but any one of them could have been plucked of the streets she remembered, and perhaps they had been.

No, that wasn't what was bothering her, it was the fact that, "Why are there only women here?"

Tegan shrugged. "Don't know. We don't get a lot of information."

"Right." Rose took another spoonful. "So what do you know?"

"That we're the lucky ones. There's about a dozen or so camps around Salisbury, most lead off to the conversion factories. But they're keeping a lot of people back. Keeping us alive for some reason." She looked down. "Not much, I know, but it's something. And there's not a lot you can do when you're wearing one of these things. Not if you don't want your head blown off. It tracks where you are, and everyone follows the schedule. So stick with me, and I'll make sure you're in the right place at the right time."

"Then what?"

"Then nothing," muttered Tegan.

"Oh, come on," started Rose, careful to keep her voice down. "There's always something you can do. Can you hear yourself? You're talking about…about people turning into monsters like I'm asking you about the weather. This is our planet. Don't you want to fight for it?"

Rose watched her, and, for an instant, she saw some spark in the older woman's eyes, but then Tegan shook her head. "Where've you been?" she hissed back. "We have been fighting. And this is what it's come too. Millions of people locked up, tens of thousands converted into those things every day. There isn't anything we can do."

"Well, I'm gonna try."

Tegan sighed. "If it's going to help, I'll listen. They don't really care what we say. But that sort of thing's been tried before."

"And what happened to them?"

"Boom."

* * *

It had been a quick goodbye to the Doctor before he had been taken off to where UNIT had last seen Rose, and then Jack had been escorted through the underground set-up to a far more populated area. 

Amongst the numerous soldiers and a dozen or so civilians, Jack spotted what looked like the man-in-charge an instant before he was introduced by the private escorting him.

"Sir, this is Captain Jack Harkness," he said, surprising no-one, save perhaps the officer he was addressing.

The impeccably dressed soldier turned and looked at him. "So you're the last best hope Lethbridge's sent down to us. Bloody great. Don't you salute wherever the hell you come from?" He spoke with a strong Scottish accent, seeming to take a delight in rolling his r's.

"I'm not a captain in the army, uh, Colonel."

"Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood, _Captain_. An American, huh? Fat lot of good you lot were in the invasion. Good job with the nukes, by the way. You bloody trigger happy morons." He glanced at Jack's escort. "Alright, private, dismissed."

"Didn't have much to do with that either, Colonel," said Jack, planting a smile firmly on his face and determined to be as charming as possible. Or polite, anyway.

"Well, hallelujah, at least we won't have to put up with that crap again. Last American we had in here I'd have shot as soon as he opened his mouth, but Lethbridge has this thing about spontaneous executions, and who am I to argue with my CO? This way, Captain."

Whatever he thought of Wood, Jack felt a lot better haven seen this part of Harriet's bunker. Here, there was life. People talking, laughing, making stupid jokes about dying. The sombreness of his mood lessened, and he let himself feel a little bit more hopeful. After all, the Doctor was here now, and humanity was certainly around by his time. It couldn't possibly end that badly.

"Here you are sunshine," said the Colonel. "And wipe that bloody smile of your face before you blind someone with those Captain America teeth." He punched the door open, causing the casually dressed gentleman inside to jump slightly and then look rather apologetic.

"Sullivan!" snapped the Colonel. "Here's your new charge. Captain, your babysitter. Have fun."

"Ah, Harry Sullivan," the man said, offering a hand as the Colonel left. "Captain Harkness, yes?"

"Jack's just fine. You leading the scientific team?"

That apologetic smile again. "I _am_ the scientific team, I'm afraid. Doctor of medicine, but there's plenty of people trained in first aid and we don't really have the resources for major operations. So most of the time I'm stuck here instead."

"And not a member of His Colonelships's brigade?"

"Navy actually, retired."

"Right." Jack took a look around. "Nice set-up. Very neat."

"There hasn't exactly been a lot of work going on. I fought the Cybermen once before and the only thing that stopped them was gold."

"For the really good ones, that's about right, yeah," agreed Jack, staring at a cupboard full of chemical compounds and feeling his eyes glaze over at the names on the labels. "I'm really more a hands on sort of a guy. Where you storing the weapons?"

Harry had them bring everything down to the lab, and soon Jack was examining the mangled remains of dozens of Cyberguns as well as several Earth weapons concurrent with the time period. There was a good supply of the precious gold sitting on the far workbench, ready for when Jack had constructed his first prototype.

"Most of the reserves are gone," Harry told him. "UNIT didn't have nearly enough for a full scale invasion and by the time they got the okay for the country's gold reserves the Cybermen had made sure there was no way they could get to it. We lost a lot of people."

"But you're still using it as ammo?"

"It's right up there with the rest of our essential salvage." He gave a slight smile. "We've raided a lot of jewellery stores."

"Right." He chewed his lip, trying to remember how he had been taught to do this. High tech, low tech. All in the emergency training. They needed weapons as good as the Cyberguns, if not better, and it was all up to him. Somehow he got the feeling the Doctor could have rewired the components without so much as a-

The door opened, another box of components. "Ah," said Harry, seeming inordinately pleased. "The good stuff."

"The good stuff?"

"This used to be the Doctor's. He left a lot of his things behind when he left UNIT."

Jack blinked. "The Doctor worked for UNIT?"

"Back in the seventies, or eighties. Anyway, he was still there when I arrived. And then, well…" He waved a hand. "I'm sure you have some idea of what happens when you step aboard that ship of his."

"Some," agreed Jack, as he picked through the new arrivals. He lifted out a piece of tech that looked distinctly Dalek in origin. "I think we may be on to something."

* * *

After the meal, Tegan and Rose had left the hall with everyone else and arrived in what Tegan generously called the rec room. In fact, it was another great hall, but this time half of it was open air. 

A way out, thought Rose, until she realised there really was no way she could scale a sheer twenty foot high metal wall.

People walked, talked, played strange games with spoons that had been pilfered from the mess hall. "Wonder how long it would take to dig out with one of those," said Rose idly.

Tegan grinned. "Good luck - the ground's concrete."

"Okay, scrap plan A then," she said. "Now plan B-" She stopped. Tegan had grabbed her arm, pulled her gently back into the crowd.

In fact, everyone was moving backwards. Slowly, inevitably, and all eyes on the far end of the hall, where the doors were.

"What?" mouthed Rose.

"Message for us," said Tegan. "Now you get to see the real vermin: collaborators. Gave themselves up for partial conversion, saved themselves from the real factories. _Their_ intermediaries."

Unlike everyone else, Rose was desperate to see what was coming through the door. She heard footsteps, heavy metal footsteps. Then the buzz of electronic equipment.

"Rose Tyler," said a voice that wasn't quite human. Tegan looked at her, eyes wide, but she didn't move away. "Rose Tyler," said the voice again.

Her collar beeped. Low and inoffensive, but enough for everyone around her, save Tegan, to treat her as though she were a bomb about to explode.

And then the crowd parted and she saw _them_. Not quite human, but not the metallic creatures Brigadier Bambera had shown her either. Their arms and legs were made of metal, their faces pale but made of flesh. Eyes. She couldn't look into their eyes.

"You are Rose Tyler," said the first one, the metallic arm reaching out, seizing her forearm in an unbreakable grip.

"Who are you? What do you want?" she demanded.

It pulled her away. No-one moved.

"Where are you taking her?" demanded Tegan. Rose looked back over her shoulder, grateful for what would be nothing more than a token gesture, and saw how pale Tegan was from even going that far.

"Processing," one of them answered. "She will become like us."


	6. this is the face of silver

  


_"Merlin is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes he's there, and he has only one constant companion: death. Some say he is from the future, that he is aging backwards, and that is why he knows what is to come. He remembers it, because it has already happened."_

- what Ancelyn didn't tell Ace, Battlefield

this is the face of silver

The Doctor is coming, thought Rose, the Doctor is coming.

He had to be, and she had a very good, very rational line of reasoning for believing this. Somehow, between when she had been put in that camp and when they had plucked her out, they had discovered that she was connected to him.

Wasn't the first time it had happened. Seemed to be general practice for her to be used as some glorified bargaining chip in this sort of situation. And the Doctor must have done something pretty spectacular for them to bother searching for her. Find her. Take her away.

And he'd be coming for her now. He would.

This was Rose's very good, very rational line of reasoning. And she clung to it as she was marched through the silent corridors.

Metal gave way to earth stripped bare of any plant life, and Rose caught her first glimpse of the full-scale of what the Cybermen had done to her country, to her world.

Great spirals of steel rose up from the flat ground like cities, dark and sharp against a fading sun. The harsh, unwavering edges of alien architecture stretched as far as she could see. A jarring burr of machinery cut through the air, and the wind brought with it a faintly unpleasant chemical smell.

Lines of silver, moving. But as she got closer the lines broke into dots, into individuals, and each one was a silver giant.

She flew across it all, the slim platform transport landing in a gleaming courtyard of another giant, sprawling building. And she was very quiet, very co-operative. Reason told her that resisting would be likely to do nothing more than give her a broken arm - the steel grip of the partially converted human was still wrapped around her wrist like a vice.

But there, in the courtyard, faced with a single one of those silver giants - those Cybermen - she felt reason leave her. She wasn't sure at which point she started screaming and struggling and trying to tear her arm out of its socket to get away, but it didn't matter. It changed nothing. They didn't react, didn't hesitate, didn't try to silence or speak to her.

Later she'd believe that it was the tear duct that did it. Looking up into that blank metal face with its monstrous parody of human features and seeing a notch at the corner of each eye that they couldn't possibly had had any use for. Like some engineer's last, desperate plea, weeping for the humanity that he had taken. A tear duct that could never hope for tears.

That could never hope.

And so she screamed and she cried and she pleaded and begged.

They brought her into the factory and fixed her into the wall. A coffin, one of thousands.

Rose grew tired, Rose grew quiet. She couldn't move, but her eyes were alive. Not that that mattered to them. They had gone, leaving her here alone. Silence, except for her own breathing. The beating of her heart.

She felt a sting in the back of her neck, her vision clouded. She did not fall away into unconsciousness, but she fell back, somewhere deep inside herself. Looking out, but trapped. Time changed little bit by little bit and though she could think - she _could_ think - it was not as it was before.

Very carefully, very slowly, these were the thoughts that Rose formed before she felt the second stab into the back of her neck:

_Is this what happened to Mum?_

Why was I so mad at him?

The Doctor is coming.

* * *

This was dangerous driving.

The headlights hadn't been turned on as night fell and the Doctor was relying on the fact that his eyesight was a good deal better than the average human's and that his reactions were ten times as fast. In theory.

Hotwiring a car had been simple enough, as had installing the stealth generator and he had made it across the London perimeter without catching sight of another living, or cyberised, soul. Sergeant Conrad, on the other hand…the Doctor assumed that he had gone back to the UNIT bunker, but he couldn't quite convince himself that that was the case.

Something was _wrong_ here. Every sense that he possessed, that had served him so well for over a thousand years, told him that he was missing the point.

But right now, it didn't matter. All that he was concerned about was finding Rose, and if that meant taking corners at eighty miles per hour and running no small risk of flying off the road, then so be it. He knew where he was going, and with the stealth generator active there was no way either the humans or the Cybermen could track him.

He started singing. It didn't help.

Concentrating so much on keeping the car on the road, he barely noticed the time pass, or the miles. And determined not to be shot at without a very good reason, he left the car a half mile from his destination, walked the last leg of the journey along the old country road. It was rather pleasant in an eerie post-apocalyptic kind of way.

Pleasant until he was close enough to see what had happened.

The land had been levelled; the base destroyed. Recently too.

A few hours too late, a few minutes, it didn't matter, if Rose had been here, then she wasn't now. The trail was cold.

He wasn't willing to turn back, not to London, and not without knowing what had happened to her. The Cybermen were efficient, logical and ruthless, but humanity had always had a knack for survival. Surely there must have been survivors here too?

He began to walk, circling round the perimeter of the bomb craters, not sure he what he was looking for.

But he knew that he had found it when he saw a flicker of movement on a nearby outcropping of rocks. Far enough away to escape the bombardment, close enough to give an excellent view of the devastation. And if he had spotted them, then they had probably seen him. He wasn't making any effort to hide himself in the moonlight.

Not changing pace at all, he changed direction, headed quite calmly towards the hillock.

He was entirely unsurprised when someone shouted, "Halt!"

The Doctor did as he was told and waited, careful to keep his hands in plain sight. A moment later a figure approached, cautious but confident, and holding, not a gun, but a _sword._

He was a few steps away when the Doctor realised that he recognised him, but the figure spoke first, "Merlin! It is you! I suspected as much, but the others would not let me approach until they were sure you were not with our enemy."

"Ancelyn?" asked the Doctor. "You recognised me?"

Ancelyn bowed, sheathed his sword. "Aye, while your face is no more familiar to me now than it was before, your manner is quite recognisable. It is good that you are here, lord, this country has fallen upon dark times."

"I'd noticed. What're you doing here?"

"We are stationed close-by to guide those who were not aware of the destruction of this place to our second retreat in these moors."

"That wasn't exactly…" The Doctor shook his head. "I thought you'd decided to go back to your own dimension."

"It was my intention," admitted Ancelyn. "But when the moment came, I could not bear to be parted from my beloved. So I stayed. And she generously consented to be my wife."

"You _married_ the Brigadier?"

"As you say, Winifred is my wife, and we were deeply fortunate to both survive the horrors that have swept across this place."

The Doctor felt a strange sort of melancholy settle over him, but managed to smile, said, "Congratulations."

"Thank you, m'lord. And, if I may ask, why are you here? Have you come to deliver us from the silver beast?"

For a moment the Doctor felt distinctly uncomfortable. "I'll do what I can. In fact, there's a friend of mine working with UNIT back in London-"

"-they have survived the purges?"

"Looked like it."

"This is good news, indeed, Merlin. My lady will be delighted."

"Yeah, well, they're getting some help now. But I'm looking for a friend of mine - Rose Tyler - and I was told she came through here."

Ancelyn nodded. "It is as you say. The girl was here while we were attacked, but was lost in a cave-in."

"Lost?" demanded the Doctor. "D'you mean dead?"

"It is…not known what fate befell her."

"Yes, it damn well is." Ancelyn and the Doctor looked up to see another figure approaching. A woman in army camouflage, a gun holstered at her hip. "Ancelyn, who is this?"

"This is Merlin." He looked back up at the hill. "Has there been some change to our situation?"

"No, the captain's just getting edgy. Wanted to know who this guy was."

The Doctor stared at the newcomer. "I'm the Doctor," he said offering her a hand. She gave it a terse shake.

"Livia," she told him, glanced behind her, threw a quick hand signal up at the outcropping. "Heard a lot about you, Doctor."

"What happened to Rose?"

"I was…" she paused, ran a hand through her hair. "Damn it, I was the one responsible for getting her out of the base. We were meant to be heading back to London, to find you, in fact."

The Doctor's voice was cold: "What happened?"

"We left Bambera's office, and were on our way to the south garage when the bombardment started. She was caught in a rock fall."

"And what did you do?" It was almost a sneer.

"I got out of there." Livia folded her arms. "Why? What would you expect me to do? Dig her body out from under a few tonnes of rock with my bare hands? That what you'd have done?"

The Doctor looked away. "You sure she was caught in the fall?"

"Pretty sure, yeah."

He took a step forward. "How sure?"

Livia tilted her head up, met his eyes with a cool gaze. "The tunnel came down on top of us. I got caught at the outside of the fall." She shrugged. "If she wasn't under there she'd have been trapped on the other side. We didn't catch her amongst the stragglers though, and the Cybermen don't leave anyone left alive when they attack."

"But they do take prisoners," said the Doctor.

"In that case, she'd be better off dead."

"I don't think so."

"Good for you, Doctor. But the point's academic, she's gone. I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you sound it." He looked at Ancelyn. "If she was still alive where would they take care?"

Livia and Ancelyn exchanged a glance. "Merlin, I think that-"

"Help me, Ancelyn, or don't help me, but make up your mind."

He gave a slight smile. "My apologies. If the girl were alive and captured, they would have taken her to the camps on Salisbury plains. That is where they take their souls and paint them silver.

"Thanks. You don't happen to know the way, do you?"

Ancelyn nodded, turned to Livia, "Tell my lady that I will see her soon."

Livia started. "You have just got to be kidding me. You're abandoning us? To go swanning off looking for some girl who's probably buried below us? With this…this individual?"

"This is Merlin," said Ancelyn, expression serious, eyes calm. "It is he who guided Arthur, and he who brought Excalibur to my world. I would follow him to death."

"Which is exactly where you'll be going." She shook her head. "Bambera will be furious."

"My lady will understand."

"Well, I don't," she said quietly. "But I won't try to stop you." She shot a look at the Doctor. "What about everyone else in the camps? Are you going to rescue them too?"

"I'm looking for Rose."

"I see." She gave a tight smile. "Very heroic of you."

The Doctor turned, walking away. "Come on, Ancelyn."

"Wait!" called Livia. "If you're going…the Cybermen hold on their records in a central registry, and they take a DNA sample of all prisoners. We've never been able to crack it, but you…well, I don't doubt that it's not beyond your abilities. That's probably your best chance for finding her."

"I doubt many humans will have been travelling in time," said the Doctor. "Usually causes a minute amount of harmless DNA mutation…should be enough to locate her." He met Livia's eyes. "Thank you."

"Good luck." She paused, sighed. "And I suppose you'd better take some supplies. Put them to some good use."

* * *

"Harry," said Jack, giving him a slap on the back, "we make a beautiful team."

Harry grinned, and Jack grinned back. In an odd sort of way, Harry reminded him of Algy, what with all that courtesy and old world charm.

But then the fun of working with him alone in the laboratory was over, and Jack found himself put in charge of a production line. Several dozen soldiers, all set-up in a nice warm room near the heart of the compound listening very carefully to his every word.

It was slow at first, with Jack and Harry having to look over everyone's shoulders and make sure no mistakes were made, but after a few hours things got easier. Every soldier knew exactly what he had to do and they were making a good fifteen proto-glitter guns an hour.

"Well, this is all looks very impressive," said the Brigadier, inspecting their progress as they worked through the night. "How's it going?"

"Very well, sir," said Harry. He picked up one of the finished models, handed it to the Brigadier. "And we've enough salvage for almost a thousand units."

"What about ammunition?"

Jack stepped forward. "That's a little trickier."

"How so?" asked the Brigadier.

"Well, these aren't exactly glitter guns. They'll do the job, but we're working with twenty-first century technology, and that's been augmented with alien tech. So not exactly standard stuff."

"So what precisely is the problem, Captain?"

"They need a lot of gold."

"I thought you said-"

"Yeah, they use up hardly any when they _fire_, but that needs a critical mass inside the gun."

The Brigadier rubber his forehead, nodded. "Alright. So right now, how many can we load?"

"Thirty," Jack told him. "If we're lucky."

"First priority is more ammunition then. And that's going to be a problem."

"Not such a big one as you think, sir," Harry chipped in.

"Oh?"

Jack grinned. "Well, I thought if we're going to give you weapons from the future, may as well get some of the accoutrements too." He picked a small grey box from the desk and passed it to the Brigadier, who held it as though it were a bomb.

"Very nice." He raised his eyebrows at Jack. "What is it?"

"A metal detector. A very advanced metal detector that should be able to pinpoint any gold within a radius of ten miles or so."

The Brigadier nodded. "Harkness, you might just have given us what we need to get our planet back."

"Certainly hope so. It's my planet too."

When the Brigadier had left and Wood had determined that he understood the construction of the guns well enough to oversee their production, Jack dragged Harry to the mess hall, ignoring the mutter of "bloody civilians" as he left the room.

He sat Harry down and went to get some food and a pot of tea. He didn't understand the fascination with the stuff, but the English seemed to be firmly convinced that it could cure all ills, and Harry certainly seemed in need of curing.

"Here you go," Jack said, taking the seat opposite.

"Thanks." He downed the cup of tea as though it were a cheap brand of whisky.

Jack picked at his food, leaving Harry to his own thoughts for a few moments, before he said, "You been here long then?"

"I was picked up by UNIT as soon as they found out who was attacking us." A slight smile, self-deprecating. "I'd met them before, you see, off travelling with the Doctor. The Prime Minister seemed to be under the impression that that made me some sort of an expert."

"Well, you do know more than the average human from this era."

"I suppose so."

"You didn't want this job, I take it?"

Harry stopped eating, gave Jack a long look. "I'm a doctor. They brought me here to help figure out ways of killing people."

"They're not people."

"How do we know that? How do we know there isn't some way of turning them back? But nobody's even bothered to try. It's shoot to kill." He stopped, tried to take a drink from his empty tea cup. "I'm terribly sorry. I'm just really rather tired. Hasn't been easy, you know."

"War never is."

"Sounds like you've had some experience."

Jack shrugged. "Nothing like this." He leaned over the table, put his hand on Harry's arm. "We did a good job today, okay? We're gonna save a lot of lives."

"I hope so."

* * *

Logic was on their side. More or less.

The Cybermen wouldn't expect a single, virtually unarmed individual to try and penetrate one of their factories to retrieve one particular person because it was a very stupid, very illogical thing to do. Unless, of course, they'd taken account of the generally illogical nature of humans and made their own counter plans for any instances of outright stupidity. In which case, the Doctor was in a lot of trouble.

He and Ancelyn had retrieved the borrowed car and driven on to Salisbury. The Doctor took them as close to the factories as he dared before they stopped.

The Doctor didn't bother to comment on the sight before him, instead got out of the car and began dismantling the stealth device.

Ancleyn's head appeared above the other side of the car a few moments later. "If I may ask, Merlin, what are you doing?"

The Doctor glanced at Ancelyn, changed settings on the sonic screwdriver then continued working. "A few adjustments. I need to get into that factory. And you need to make a diversion. But I'd rather that we both got out alive."

"You have a plan then?"

The Doctor grinned. "I always have a plan. This thing can dissemble into about six smaller units. Good old flexible Cybertech. So we're going to borrow two of them to hide ourselves and hope that the other four still hide the car. And then we're going to go stir things up down there. It's still gonna be pretty dicey though."

"I have faced the Cybermen before." Ancelyn drew his sword, let it catch the blue light of the sonic screwdriver. "And I have killed them before."

The Doctor frowned. "That gold?"

"It is plated with the soft metal, aye. The professor treated it with chemicals so that the gold would not so easily be worn away in battle. She is a women of great knowledge, not unlike your own."

"Thanks. I think." Another flicker of blue light. "Right, I think that's done it. Take this. You know how to use explosives?

"My lady insisted that I learn the ways of this world's weapons."

"Fantastic." The Doctor popped the boot open and opened the crate secured in the back. "Very nice of Livia to give us these. Timers and everything." He began to unpack the explosives. "Now listen Ancelyn, when the first one goes off they're going to react very quickly, so you need to be out of there by then. Don't try to fight them, just get back here. If Rose and I don't join you within a couple of minutes just leave."

"How much time should I allow before the first explosion?"

The Doctor took a deep breath, and made some very quick, very rough calculations. "Give me twenty minutes. I know my way around these sorts of places but I've got to find some way to access the central computer first, then crack a lock, avoid whatever guards they have, find Rose and get out."

"A heroic mission," said Ancelyn.

"Bloody stupid one too," said the Doctor.

* * *

She knew her name. Her name was Rose.

Rose was not sleeping. Rose wanted to sleep. Rose was….Rose was…she tried to shut her eyes. Tried to remember. _Tried._

Dislocation. This wasn't her. But then she didn't know who she was.

Chemicals. Chemicals inside her, inside her brain, inside her head, changing her. She knew _that_. And she clung to it.

It was so very cold.

She could no longer fell her fingers, her toes. Reminded her of a rhyme, for children. She had been a child once, she was almost certain of that. Who had she been?

There were noises in her ears and she wondered if that was what it was like to hear as a machine. She wondered if their hearing was so much better that they could hear noises all that time, every little creak and crinkle, no more silence ever again. A world of the shriek and clang of metal. Straight lines and perfect circles and sums that all add up.

Maybe she couldn't feel her fingers because they weren't there any more? She hadn't felt them take her hands. Perhaps that was their mercy. Though they could not feel perhaps they knew of mercy and dulled her mind and her body so she would not feel what it was that they changed.

And stole her memories so that she would not know what it was that she had lost.

Would she even know that she had been human, once? Would she want to?

She was still there, somewhere inside her head, somewhere deep down where she couldn't hear her screaming, couldn't feel her clawing at the walls, scraping bloody nails against the prison of her mind. Fighting and losing and falling away from herself, a little at a time.

She was still in there. Waiting. Waiting for someone. Someone.

"Rose."

The voice again. Somewhere in her memories, surfacing like a phantom. A taunt of everything she could not reach.

"Rose."

It was very insistent now. Very demanding. A certainty that had no place inside her head. Not sluggish at all, not like her -

Something dark swam in her vision. Was that them? Were they going to take her somewhere new? Had they killed her already?

"Rose, it's alright. You're going to be alright." Something tilted, outside, inside her head, she wasn't sure. A burning on her cheek, the five fingers of a warm-blooded hand. "I've got you."

The world fell sideways. "S'okay now, Rose. Gonna get you out of here."

Her eyes were open or her eyes were closed. She didn't know. She didn't care.

She thought.

Rose, she thought, what is rose? 


	7. interlude: input only

_**rose** n., 1. any prickly bush or shrub of the genus _Rosa_, bearing usu. Fragrant flowers generally of a red, pink, yellow or white colour._

_-The Concise Oxford Dictionary, pub 1991, Eighth Edition _

What is rose, indeed? Or what is iris?

Our tale, it seems, has taken an unpleasant turn. Naturally, there is no such things as happy endings, merely a stopping of the narrative, but those within continue on. Or so I like to think.

Perhaps, as reassurance that all could be well, I shall relate a story once told to me. An anecdote, if you will. It is set in a place where the Time Lords are not quite dead but one cannot be sure if the Doctor is truly aware of their presence or not. Oh, the Time War still happened, as indeed did a great many other events that you may or may not be familiar with. Such is the way of all things.

On the day when this slight interlude occurred - how I must apologise for these side-trips of mine, but I am not sorry enough to stop them, I'm afraid - on this day, Co-ordinator Vansell, controller of Gallifrey's Celestial Intervention Agency and an old school acquaintance of the Doctor's, was determinedly ignoring the monitor on his desk that showed he had an incoming message.

It would say nothing that he wished to hear, and more bad news could wait. The Lady Rodan's latest report contained enough information to concern him.

Perhaps, he thought, it had been a mistake to accept her request for a transfer. He smiled bitterly. It had been the Doctor who had given the young Time Lord (or Lady, for who are we to judge a choice of name for a species not of our own?) a taste for a more adventurous lifestyle than monitoring traffic control on Gallifrey had offered (and, indeed, how cruel of the Gallifreyans to create such a tedious post in the first place).

That was what had decided it in the end, Vansell could not turn away a victim of the Doctor's, and she had gained excellent grades at the Academy, after all.

No, no, this news had been inevitable. Nobody was truly at fault. They had simply overestimated the Doctor's ingenuity. They were, of course, not the first. But perhaps they could take comfort from the fact that they would most probably be the last.

The Co-ordinator rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. It could wait till morning, he decided. There was a great deal more necessary work to deal with. Shada had been designed as a prison, after all, not a colony world. Though, of course, that is precisely what it had become, after the end of the last great Time War.

* * *

Somewhere, somewhen, the Doctor woke up first. 

He pulled the headset off and looked around the recreation room, a wide grin on his face. Neither he nor Rose had moved, of course they hadn't, but the experience had been fantastic. Mimicking the five senses in a virtual reality environment was difficult enough, but his own innate sense of time and being had been fooled into thinking they really had been in another world.

Rose sat up, struggling a little with her own headset.

"Wow," she said. "Can we go again?"

"Nah," said the Doctor. "It's one of those couple of times in a lifetime things. Go too often and you get addicted. Start forgetting about real life, and get all wrapped in the VR. People have strapped themselves in and starved to death cause they just couldn't face reality any more."

Way to kill the good mood, thought Rose as she shuddered slightly.

"It was amazing though," she said, letting her thoughts drift back to the space race programme that they had decided upon. "I mean, I knew how to fly the shuttle. I knew what to look out for, when to change course, how far I could push the engines." She looked down at her fingers and flexed the muscles.

"All part of the service," said a new voice. The door to the rec room had opened, and their hostess, Valeria, entered. She was a tall woman dressed in a simple blue gown. Quietly she moved round the machinery, powering it down. "I've the lunch booked that Miss Tyler suggested," she said as she finished her work.

As the door slid shut behind her, the Doctor glanced at Rose. "And where exactly have you booked us lunch?"

* * *

They were having ice cream halfway up a mountain, and Rose had just finished scraping her bowl of mint choc-chip clean. She'd learnt that if she didn't eat quickly, then she wouldn't get to finish her meals. It wasn't doing anything for her indigestion, and rushing a dessert was very annoying, especially when the Doctor hadn't yet finished his. She'd have to work on her timing. 

She held her spoon up in front of her mouth, eyeing the last tiny sliver of ice-cream for a moment before sticking her tongue out and licking the silver clean. She glanced at the Doctor, and cringed slightly as she noticed that he was chewing the ice cream.

At least he seemed to be relaxing, more or less. It would be nice for there to be more of this, playing tourist rather than hero. Save the heroics for the weekdays, she thought. They both deserved days off.

"Finished?" asked the Doctor, looking up from a bowl that had somehow been almost emptied in the past thirty seconds. "Ready to go?" He seemed quite ready to leap out of his seat and leave the dessert to melt in the sun.

"So how come we have to keep moving all the time?" she asked lightly, and not budging an inch. "How come we never seem to take the time to sit back and…"

"Smell the roses?" asked the Doctor with a grin.

"Ha ha," said Rose. "But we never seem to go anywhere quiet, peaceful, out of the way."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and licked a blob of vanilla off the back of his spoon. "Not going to see much like that, are you?"

"Yeah, but we always seem to be in such a rush. You never want to hang around once we've finished being heroic. It's all better get back to the TARDIS, better slip away before they start asking questions, even when they know all the important stuff."

The Doctor waved his arms around, in a rather inelegant attempt to indicate their present surroundings.

"Look around, Rose, it's a beautiful day, a beautiful view, admittedly on an artificial tourist world, but still... You're not looking too bad yourself, and there's no sign of anyone in any sort of danger except over-indulging on this delicious ice-cream." He planted another spoonful in his mouth and closed his eyes in contentment.

Rose planted her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. "I bet there's gold inside the mountain, and there's a dragon guarding it, and someone's sacrificing a good-looking prince to the dragon and we have to go help the spunky princess who's after the gold, but can't really be bothered with the pretty boy, so we have to convince her that true love is more important than money and every one lives happily ever after. Even the dragon, who realises burning people isn't very nice."

The Doctor opened his eyes. "Close…but no. We're just going to sit here. Enjoy the ice-cream. Then head back to the TARDIS."

"Aha!" said Rose triumphantly. "You see, we have to leave, we can't hang around and just… mingle. So tell me why." She folded her arms. "And I'm not leaving this table until you do."

The Doctor put down his spoon. "If you wanted to stay in one place, you should have stayed on Earth. With Rickey."

"I'm not talking about settling down. Just sitting around for awhile. Relaxing. Doing nothing."

"Boring."

"What? Cause there's no adrenaline rush for a couple of days? You could always go abseiling or something," she said, with a nod at the mountain.

"Can't," he told her. "Heights give me vertigo."

"Really?" asked Rose, her eyes suddenly alight.

"Came as a bit of a surprise to me too."

"Let's go then."

"The TARDIS?"

"No," she said, nodding at the mountain. "Let's go up there, and let's abseil down."

He blinked and stared at her for a long moment. "Now, Rose…"

"Come on!" she insisted. "You get to scare me every day with your 'let's see what interesting way can I find to get us killed' game. All I'm asking for is one little abseil."

He looked up at the mountain. "But it's really, really high."

"That's right."

"And it's a really, really long way down once we're up there."

"That's right."

"They might not let us up?" he said hopefully.

"Since when has a no entry sign been a problem for you?" she asked.

"And we don't have any equipment."

She swung around, and held both his hands, half comforting, half teasing. "Oh, that's alright," she said, smiling. "I checked with Valeria before the VR thing. They've people at the top doing abseils down all day long."

The Doctor forced a grin. "Oh, fantastic," he said through gritted teeth as Rose practically skipped ahead.

"As long as the weather holds," she called back over her shoulder.

The Doctor looked heavenwards to a perfect sapphire blue sky. "Miracle please?" he said, as he remembered the weather control satellites in orbit.

* * *

Oh, how happy they are, how free! A delight, to be sure. 

But let us now return to what remained of the Time Lords, and their work. It was the Lady Rodan that we were most interested in. Here she was, busy in the medical laboratories. Fussing. Worrying. How emotional she had become for one of this exalted species.

A few minutes later, Vansell joined her and didn't bother to conceal his bad mood in the least. "Well?" he snapped and Rodan paid not the slightest bit of attention to his temper.

"The inhibitions we've inserted aren't holding," she told him. "I've got a team working on another non-Earth destination, but it's going to take-"

"-time." Vansell sighed. "Can't we slow it down relative to us?"

"Already done. But the further we take it, the greater the risk of him noticing."

"Well, we can't risk that. All this effort put in to perfecting an Earth, and he wants to go travel the universe again. Hasn't he caused enough trouble? Doesn't he think it might be appropriate to stay out of other people's affairs for a while?"

Rodan smiled, and it was a smile of sadness. "Apparently not."

"But this tourist-world was sufficient?"

"Yes. But then he'd expect a certain artificialness to it. The Rose avatar is attempting to convince him to stay as long as possible. To give us time to design a new destination."

"Very well, if there are any significant changes, you must alert me at once." He stood over the still body of the Doctor, eyes closed, breath regular and his body encased in a complex network of neural circuitry. "A death sentence would have been so much easier," he sighed.

Rodan watched him go, returning to her duties and casting just the occasional glance at Shada's only remaining prisoner.

* * *

Oh, fanciful, perhaps, and such a narrative cheat - "It was only a dream, dear reader, do not fret!" - but an idea that, perhaps, when first encountered contains enough truth to unsettle one a little. 

There is, after all, no way for you to step outside that corporeal body of yours to gain empirical evidence that, yes, the universe is just as you believe it to be. But let us just assume that it is and continue on, faith in your own senses secure as ever it was.

Ah, now we must return to the Doctor's plight. He has found his beloved Rose, but not quite in time to save her from the cyberisation process. I shall spare you the medical details, but suffice to say it is not pleasant to watch or to participate in.

He has made it back to the car, as has the heroic Ancelyn, prepared to sacrifice all on the word of the man who he knows but does not recognise. Together they race back to the resistance's headquarters, and the Doctor can only hope that, once there, he can find some way to save Rose.

But what of our other companion? What of Jack?

He is still in London, but, ahhh, what progress he has made! How useful a little knowledge is, and, oh, how very dangerous. There is a change in the mood here, and I do believe that the scent is one of hope.


	8. this is relative time

_"Through the millennia, the Time Lords of Gallifrey led a life of ordered calm, protected against all threats from lesser civilisations by their great power. But this was to change. Slowly and terribly, the threat from Skaro became evident and faced with annihilation, the Time Lords had no choice but descend from their towers and march to war…"_

- Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar

this is relative time

"Tactics are all very well, gentlemen, but I want to talk strategy. We cannot negotiate, we cannot reason and we may not have the resources or technology to destroy every Cyberman on this planet. So how do we convince them to leave?" Harriet Jones looked down the conference table, into the faces of the men who were responsible, who would be responsible, for this chance to strike back.

Brimmicombe-Wood spoke first. "Enough of this pissing about; we should go straight for control. Hit them fast and hard and get them out of our bloody country."

"Language, Colonel," muttered Lethbridge-Stewart.

"Captain Harkness, Dr. Sullivan, you've fought the Cybermen in other circumstances. Other places, other…times." The Prime Minister looked expectantly from one to the other.

Jack met Harry's eyes for an instant, though both had military experience, they were still the only civilians here and Jack, at least, didn't feel qualified to give strategic advice on a situation when there were professionals, much more familiar with the situation than him, in the room.

"We can't think just of our country," said Harry, leaning forward. "We don't know the extent of their forces world-wide. I think we should be more cautious."

Wood rolled his eyes. "Caution was what got us into this situation in the first place. Investigation, negotiation and then having our bloody planet nicked." He slammed his fist into the table top. "We convince them we're strong enough to fight them, maybe they'll bow to their bloody logic and leave."

"And if they don't?" said Lethbridge-Stewart.

"Then us buzzing around like flies at their wee patrols isn't going to make a damned bit of difference anyway."

Harriet nodded. "For once, I'm inclined to agree with Colonel Wood." The door opened, the nervous face of a private. "Ah, yes," said Harriet, standing up and nodding to Jack. "The car's ready. And, I believe, Dr. Sullivan has volunteered to drive you."

"Uh, I know how to drive, Prime Minster," Jack told her.

She smiled. "Of course you do. But nobody goes out alone. Not even time-travelling adventurers from the future. Besides, now that we've re-established contact with the resistance outside London, they too have an opportunity to benefit from your expertise." She nodded. "Good luck, Captain. I hope you find him."

Jack stood, ready to leave. "So do I."

* * *

Ancelyn was driving.

Not as quickly as the Doctor could have, not as skilfully, but with a surprising ease considering he came from a dimension where technology was as primitive and misunderstood as magic was in this one.

In the back seat, the Doctor sat, Rose's head cradled in his lap. He kept one hand holding hers, the other rhythmically stroked her forehead. He knew that her ghostly pale eyes couldn't see him, but hoped a part of her knew that he was there.

There was nothing he could do.

She was dying, she has been dying as soon as he pulled her from the cyber-conversion unit, or from the moment they had plugged her into it. All a matter of perspective, and the Cybermen had never considered how to reverse their transformation process. His hope, his only hope, lay in the technology, the medical science, of a species whose limited knowledge he had made such sport of. He hated his haste, his recklessness. He hated the fact he had not thought of even asking Livia for the most basic medical supplies.

And he hated himself for thinking of only how he should feel if he lost her.

"We are close to our destination, my lord," said Ancelyn, not taking his eyes from the road. "The professor will know how to help your friend; she has great skill with your sciences."

The Doctor didn't move, didn't even seem to hear that Ancelyn had spoken.

He seemed not to notice anything at all in the world until the car stopped and the door was pulled open. "Let her go," Ancelyn said quietly in his ear. "They are doctors. They'll take care of her. You must let her go, Merlin.

The Doctor only left the car himself when he believed the dangerously low-ceilinged cave, acting as a garage, was empty. He walked stiffly, as though rigor mortis was beginning to set in. He did not notice a pair of eyes watching him.

The hand on his shoulder brought him out of his isolation, and slowly his eyes focussed on a familiar face. He mouthed his friend's name, though no sound came out.

Jack hugged him, held him. "Do you want to see her?" he asked, his voice low.

"Can they…?"

"The professor doesn't know. She's got her stabilised. It'll give them time, Doctor."

The Doctor stood up, nodded. "I don't know if I can help her."

"They've got good people here. You're not alone."

Slowly, Jack walking closer to him than he would normally have dared, the pair made their way through the underground base, to what passed for the medical wing.

Saw Rose, lying there, hooked up to the primitive, oh so primitive, life support. Keeping her breathing regularly, the drip feeding her, her blood - her own blood that was killing her - being replaced. Skin ash grey, eyes open and unseeing.

Jack stood with him as he watched. Minutes ticked by.

A sharp cough from behind them. Jack turned, shook his head. "I'm sorry, but he needs-"

"Is he a patient?"

"No, but-"

"But nothing, Captain Harkness. If we can help that girl there's no telling how many others we might be able to save."

"Look-"

"Move. Now, Captain. And you, Doctor."

The Doctor recognised the voice, somewhere from the past, the mists of memory obscuring his recollections as he searched for a name. She stopped by the Doctor, looked up at him, her face aged, her eyes still bright, sharp with her formidable intellect.

"Liz?"

Professor Elizabeth Shaw smiled, her face suddenly softer. "I couldn't quite believe it when Bambera told me. I'm still not sure I do. Complete bodily regeneration…" She shook her head. "It's good to see you again, Doctor. We could use assistance help, and so could your friend."

"Will you be able to change her back?" asked Jack.

"Dr. Sullivan is currently making himself useful in the laboratory, and I've a few ideas we can try." She glanced at the Doctor. "But you know as well as I do how far this is beyond our science."

"I don't think…" He shook his head, his eyes straying to Rose's bed.

"Doctor." Liz's voice took on a sharp edge. "Doctor, you won't do her or yourself any good just standing here. Come to the laboratory, if nothing else it'll help keep your mind occupied."

The hour was late, and the situation grim. Nothing that Harry, Liz or the Doctor could come up with seemed to have an effect on what was happening to Rose.

"The blood transfusions are only slowing down the mutations, not stopping them," Harry told them, after checking on their patient. In fact, Rose's entire physiology was changing, adapting itself for the mechanical components that would never come.

"And our blood stocks are running low," muttered Liz. "Better start asking for volunteers."

"I'll get right on it," said Harry with a nod leaving them again.

Liz shot a look at the Doctor, almost as pale as Rose, but at least he was talking now. "Any progress over there?"

"No." The Doctor clenched his fists, and Liz thought that he was restraining himself from a much more violent reaction. It was strange, as different as this man was from the Doctor she had known, there was still that same intensity, that same knowledge and drive. Even if it now seemed to be a drive that was paralysing him from being able to act. The Doctor stood up, shoved his hands into pockets, frowned. "It's not the theory, it's the technology. Even if we were in a state of the art hospital, I don't think it would be enough. Twenty-first century medicine is just to primitive. And we're working with very limited resources."

Liz raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were a genius."

"I am. But even I can't make a rocket ship out of sharpened sticks."

"That's hardly the sort of technological difference that we're facing."

"Not quite, no," said the Doctor. "If only I could get to the TARDIS…"

"That old police box of yours?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"_She_ is currently at the bottom of the Thames."

Liz laughed, got a look from the Doctor and quickly tried to stifle it. "Oh, I'm sorry, but really…how on Earth did it get there?"

"The Cybermen must have located us after landing. Shot her straight off the bridge with us inside. Couldn't dematerialise so we had to swim for it."

"That's quite a tale." She paused, considering. "They must have spotted you pretty quickly."

"Yeah, must have."

"Not that I'm inclined to believe that you could make that thing appear and disappear wherever you liked, but why couldn't you dematerialise?"

"There was a suppression field over the whole area. It shut down most electronics. Meant that I couldn't open a gap into the Time Vortex."

Liz frowned. "If that ship could do everything you say it could, it must have been even more advanced technology than what the Cybermen have…"

"It is," agreed the Doctor.

"And yet the Cybermen could shut it down? Shut it down when they were expecting to fight against nothing more than twenty-first century human technology?"

The Doctor blinked. "Bit odd, isn't it?"

"Just a bit."

"Liz, I've just remembered something."

"Where you left a spare TARDIS?"

"Almost!" he called, striding out the door. "I've just remembered where I've seen that face before!"

* * *

"I've been waiting for you."

The Doctor had calmed down by the time he'd reached Bambera's office and managed to ask her what he wanted to know quite civilly. When she wanted an explanation, he hadn't bothered, but gone straight to the garage to wait for the patrol's return.

She was last out of the van, and would have been last out of the garage if the Doctor hadn't moved from the shadows to block her way. The leather coat merely heightened the paleness of his face in the half-light.

Livia stared up at him, unimpressed with the cold look he gave her. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," he said, stepping forward. "Yes, I think you can. There's a patient in your medical wing who's a very good friend of mine and I think you might just be the person to help her."

"I heard you'd brought the girl back, and I'm glad you found her alive, but I'm…I was a cardio-thoracic surgeon, so unless you want to give her a heart transplant, please get out of my way. I have a lot of work to be getting on with."

"No."

Her lips quirked. "What?"

"No, I'm not leaving till you've agreed to help her."

Livia rolled her eyes. "Really, this is ridiculous. I'd help the girl if I could, but I simply don't have the expertise. Liz is a brilliant scientist, and I'm sure she'll do whatever she can, now, please, I have work to do."

"I know who you are."

"For goodness sake, Doctor, you're starting to scare me." She did, to her credit, look rather nervous, but the Doctor put that down to fear of discovery rather than any actual worry at his odd behaviour.

"When I shook your hand, I wasn't sure." He took another quick step forward, grabbed her arm. She gave a soft cry of alarm.

"Let me go!"

But the Doctor was relentless. "Your skin was rather cool, but it was night-time, and I only had a few seconds. But I did know that face." He shoved up the arm of her jacket, put two fingers against her wrist.

"Damn it, Doctor, this has gone far enough." She twisted away from him, not quite breaking his grip, but reaching her gun. "You let go of me right now or I'll shoot you." She pointed the gun at his chest.

He still held her wrist with one hand, two fingers against her wrist. He met her eyes.

"You have two hearts, Livia." His voice was ice. "You're a Time Lord."

He let her go.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," she said, keeping her gun steady and backing away. "But whatever the reports say about you, you're quite mad. The Brigadier'll have you locked up."

The Doctor shook his head. "Oh, I don't think so." He took a step forward.

"Stay back!" The Doctor stopped, looked into her eyes, frowned.

"You really don't remember do you?"

"Remember what? I'm human! I was born in London, for goodness sake. _I have one heart._"

"You don't," said the Doctor.

"This is a pointless conversation. Get away from the door."

"You don't," repeated the Doctor. "Check your pulse."

Livia gave a short laugh. "I'm not pandering to your delusions, Doctor. And I'm not taking my hands off this gun."

"Alright," The Doctor nodded. "Alright, if there's some sort of memory block that's preventing you from knowing who you are, then let's try this another way."

"Let's not," she snapped. "This is your last warning, Doctor. I don't want to shoot you, but unless you get out of my way-"

"What was your mother's maiden name?"

"I…what?"

"Your first schoolteacher? The name of your first pet? What happened on your tenth birthday? Your eighteenth?"

"This is irrelevant!"

"Think, Livia, _think_. Can you remember anything about your childhood? Can you remember your first kiss? The house you grew up in?"

She shook her head. "Stop it, stop it now." Her hands shook, her grip on the gun less certain.

"You were born on Gallifrey. You graduated from the Academy in medical and biological sciences. You are a Time Lord. _Remember_."

She stared at him, suddenly very still, except for her eyes. He could see it. The moment when the block collapsed.

He caught her as she fell, dropped the gun with a sob. Her hands covered her face. Breathing uneven. "Let me go," she whispered. "Let me go."

"You remember then."

"Yes," she stood up, her eyes very still, and so much older than they had been a few minutes ago. "I remember. And I remember what you did. You _monster_."

* * *

Ah, a revelation! And allow me to intrude a moment, my dear reader, to perhaps better acquaint you with this woman - the pacing be damned! - who, as the Doctor says, is indeed a Time Lord.

The Time War, most mysterious, and I will not draw back the curtain far, but I will share with you one particular incident. The incident that was to stick in the Doctor's mind when it came to this woman, this Livia, whose full name - Rassilon forbid that a Time Lord should be blessed with a name of few syllables - was Liviatrilatnachorus. But, according to the fashion of the time - set by the Time Lords' most beloved President Romanadvoratrelundar - she, like so many of her brethren gifted with such a burdensome tag, shortened it to the first few syllables.

It was in the closing days - oh, relatively speaking, of course, no need to go into the temporal complexities here - of the war and the Time Lords and their allies had been driven back to their home system. Whilst engaged in this last desperate defence, a single volley from a Dalek ship almost brought about an end to the war there and then. The morale of the Time Lords was crumbling, and it was only by sheer force of personality, the personality of their most beloved President, that their war effort was being held together.

"What happened?" demanded the Doctor rushing into the surgery room of the fleet's primary medical TARDIS. Brown curls and a velvet frock coat, this is not the Doctor that you are perhaps best familiar with, but rest assured he _is_ the Doctor. Merely one with a more suspect dress sense - check the label on that coat and you'll discover it's from a costume shop in San Francisco.

He was caught by a Chancellery Guard, stopped from approaching the knot of surgeons surrounding the patient.

"Oh, let him go," muttered Livia, her eyes on her patient. "But if you're staying here, Doctor, keep back and keep quiet. Scanner, please."

"I saw the impact," he said.

"We all did. Don't worry, the President was transmatted over here immediately. We'll do everything we can."

"Can I help?" He leaned over her shoulder, peering down at Romana. No blood, not that sort of impact, some sort of temporal torpedo. Parts of her body were out of phase with relative time, others seemed to be fading away altogether.

"Yes," said Livia, elbowing him out of the way. "You can stand back. I need room to work." She rotated the scanner, correcting for the time variance. Each variance corrected seemed to set off another distortion, each becoming more and more discrete, the mathematics becoming ever more complex. "This keeps up," she muttered, "and I'm going to have to start using a computer."

"I'm rather good at maths," said the Doctor in his most helpful voice.

"I'm sure you are, but you're no surgeon. What is that noise?"

The loud beeping pierced the quiet of the surgery. A guard stepped forward. "Priority message for the Lord President."

Livia gave a sigh of annoyance, but the Doctor quickly stepped in. "I'll take it," he said, accepted the frequency and switched on the nearest terminal.

The face that appeared on the screen was familiar and hated, but helping. The Doctor smiled pleasantly. "Hello, can I help?"

The Master scowled. "I was hoping to speak with the President."

"She's incapacitated."

"Well, do feel free to let her know that that if no reinforcements are forthcoming within the hour, she should consider Karn to have fallen. You may insist on having me defend this miserable civilisation, but I have no intention of becoming a martyr to the cause. Good day." The screen went blank.

"It's too much," he heard Livia murmur. She stepped back from the bed. "That's enough. Activate the zero field, please."

"You can't give up yet," said the Doctor.

"I'm not. I'm simply allowing nature to take its course." Livia glanced at the nearest guard. "Please have the Presidential T-T capsule transmatted into the surgery."

The Doctor couldn't take his eyes from the President, from Romana, and the face she had worn across four of his own lifetimes. Stillness, and the calming effects of the zero field almost convinced him that this wasn't quite real. She didn't seem to be in any pain, but then he had only experienced regeneration at times of crisis and on his own with alien people on alien worlds. Romana was surrounded by the greatest medical minds Gallifrey had to offer, her planet's most advanced medical equipment and had a close link with her TARDIS. He wondered if she'd even feel the change.

She regenerated.

Livia stepped forward. "Scan, please."

The Doctor looked at the new face of the President, her sharp features, her brown hair. Taller, darker. She looked like a stranger, and he felt strangely repelled at one of the most ancient abilities of his people.

He noticed Livia talking quickly with one of her assistants, stepped forward. "What's the problem?"

She looked up at him, her face softening a little. Perhaps she finally remembered what Romana meant to him. "There's been a complication." She took another long look at the scan results and nodded. "It's rare, but possible under conditions where the previous body has undergone severe temporal stress."

"And what does that mean?" he asked ignoring the slight elation that he had been right. He had known that there was something wrong when he looked at her.

"The regeneration isn't stable. It could last a week, a year or a decade. There's just no way to tell. More than that, she's likely to develop…a need for a greater degree of emotional support, intense attachments to certain places, certain times. In effect, establishing a zone of stability for herself to attempt to counteract the effects of the faulty regeneration."

"Will it work?"

"That isn't the point. She's the commander of a temporal war effort. She doesn't have the luxury of taking time off." Livia turned away, back to Romana, nodded to an assistant.

The Doctor moved with her. "What are you doing?" he asked, voice mild.

"What I have to do." She took the hypo-needle, but the Doctor grabbed her arm. Angry.

"And this is what, exactly?" he demanded, examined the needle. "Murder! You're going to kill the President."

Livia snatched her arm back. "This is the only way, Doctor. She's the only one holding us together. Unless we want to contemplate an instant defeat then we need her. Need her as she was before. Please excuse me."

The Doctor blocked her path. "No. No, I won't let you do this. I won't let you kill her. She's just regenerated. You have no idea what the trauma of another one forced could do."

Livia gave him a long look. "What do you think I am? I know exactly what it will do. I know how to correct for the problems and I know it is the only way if we are to have any hope of going on as a species. Now get out of my way."

The Doctor shook his head. "I will not."

She sighed, annoyed, spun on her heel. "Guards! This man is no longer welcome in my surgery."

The two Chancellery Guards moved forward, grabbing the Doctor, dragging him as he struggled furiously. "The Castellan won't agree to this," he snapped.

"What about Romana, Doctor? What would she want?" she shot back, before turning away. "Get me the template of the previous body, please. We'll superimpose. There's no reason for anyone to know that the President's even regenerated."

"Don't do this!" shouted the Doctor. One last gasp, before he was taken from the surgery, the doors snapping shut behind him.

* * *

"Me!" exclaimed the Doctor. "You killed Romana!"

"I saved the President's life, you ungrateful wretch. You committed genocide! Twice!"

"I did what I had to do. To save…to save everything that we were meant to protect. There was only one choice." He swallowed. "I didn't know there was anyone left alive."

"What? You mean other Time Lords?"

"I thought I was the only one left."

Livia narrowed her eyes. "You _are_ the only one left. I'm no Time Lord. Nor is anyone else who might have been desperate enough to survive what you did." 


	9. this is medicine

_"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning…"  
"Like Gallifrey, Professor?"  
"Oh yes. But we were one of the last."_

- The Doctor and Ace

"What happened?" asked the Doctor.

Livia laughed. Bitter and wretched. "What do you think? Gallifrey burned. The Time Lords burned." Her face was twisted, ugly; an effort to control her emotions, control herself, he didn't know. "Yet here you stand, and I see you've regenerated. Still got your TARDIS, though I hear she's currently incapacitated. I suppose that's something." She slumped back against the wall. "Why couldn't you just have let me be? Why would I possibly want to remember?"

"Because I need your help."

"That girl? That stupid, human girl? _That's_ all you thought about isn't it? Some little human that you're infatuated with?" She looked at him, disbelief. Wanting some other answer.

The Doctor stared at the cave floor, collecting himself. "How did you survive?"

Livia smiled, it barely touched her lips. Her eyes blank, looking through him, remembering. "I was at the edge of the fleet, I saw the…saw _it_ approaching. Saw what it did. Didn't even think about what would happen to me later. Surrounded by all that medical equipment, the solution seemed simple enough. I destroyed my symbiotic nuclei, severed the link to my TARDIS and transmatted to the nearest planet habitable atmosphere."

The Doctor spoke very quietly. "Sounds simple."

"Yes, it does." She stepped forward. She was shaking. "No-one else on that TARDIS would agree to do it though. I don't know if anyone else in the fleet even had the _choice_ given the equipment required, the…expertise to rip out a part of yourself." Another step. "But that was the price, Doctor. I gave up my heritage, my ability to regenerate, my ability to travel through time. I'm blind, Doctor. Limited to the same senses given to these humans. Limited to this world, this time. But as you so kindly reminded me, I still have two hearts. So I'll never forget everything that you took from me."

"You didn't have-"

"Yes I did! It was that or die, Doctor!" She took a deep, sobbing breath. "And I didn't want to die. Not when I knew how to save myself." She looked at him, her eyes fierce. "And Time is so very vengeful when roused; there was no other way to hide from her wrath. Yet I see that she did not touch you, Doctor. What did you do? Make another deal? Sell her another soul?"

He was suddenly angry, defensive. Not guilt, oh not guilt, he'd had that long enough and he'd let it go. He'd let go now too. "What about you? What are you doing on Earth, right smack in the middle of an invasion?"

"This planet is _always_ being invaded! And I didn't exactly have a choice, I'm stuck here, Doctor. Stuck here thanks to you." She shook her head. "And damn it, I was alright until you brought these memories back. I could have lived with it." She took a gulp of air, tried to calm her breathing, spoke quietly. "I could have lived with it."

"I'm-

"Don't," she snarled. "Don't you dare say you're sorry."

He stilled his own emotional reaction. "You're alive."

"Is that what you call this?" She held her hands out in front of her. Spread her long, pale fingers, stared at them. "I can barely tell. It's like this all the time for them, and I don't know how one can live like this."

"If you blocked your memories once…"

She shook her head. "I didn't."

The instant thought, another piece. He asked, "Who did?" Another beat, another thought. "And Earth's a long way from Gallifrey, how did-"

"-does it matter? It was a mercy."

"Of course it matters, Livia. Someone _stole_ your memories."

"I didn't want them!" she snapped. "For pity's sake, can you leave nothing alone? Why must you always interfere? It was better before, Doctor. It was better and you've taken the last scrap of hope that I had left. Just let me be."

He swallowed, spoke carefully, afraid she really would, finally, break. "I can't."

A soft laugh. "Ah, of course, your little human. You want me to save her for you."

"Can you do it?" he asked, suddenly afraid that after all this, he would still have nothing, and perhaps a little less.

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes like glass. He wondered at the effort of will it took her, but as he watched she seemed to piece herself back together. A tarnished version of the woman he remembered from the war stood in front of him. She nodded. "Of course I can. Unlike you, I _am_ a doctor."

"Will you help her?"

She tilted her head, amused almost, a cruel amusement. "More than anything else in the universe, I want to see you dead, Doctor. What in Rassilon's name makes you think that I'd be willing to help your friend?"

"If that's what it takes to save Rose," he said.

She frowned. "What d'you mean?"

"You have the gun. Go ahead. Shoot me. If that's what it takes to save Rose."

She laughed, cold but genuine. "Oh, you really are the perfect tragic hero, aren't you? Doctor, I may want to see you dead, but I have no desire to kill you. I'm no murderer." She sighed, soft, resigned. "And I am a doctor. I'll help your friend, but don't you dare thank me."

* * *

In fact, Livia had only a single condition for saving Rose's life, and that was that the Doctor was to stay out of the medical wing while she worked. A little distant, though friendly to the humans she knew, she asked Harry to assist and Professor Shaw, intrigued, asked to watch.

The Doctor sat in the mess hall, a cold mug of tea in his hands. He stared at the pale liquid, and Jack left him to it, alternately checking in on Rose and explaining to Bambera's troops how they could put together a glitter gun. As well as constructing another scanner so they'd be able to locate enough gold to load their new weapons.

Eventually, he didn't have anything else to do. So he came and sat by the Doctor, refusing to acknowledge that he probably would still rather be left alone with his cold tea. "S'going well in surgery," Jack said, a nice, safe opening gambit.

"Don't doubt it," came the monotone reply.

"Some good reports coming in from London. They've got electronics functioning on the surface again. Looks like the Cybermen shut down their suppression field. Might even be pulling back."

"Great."

But Jack wasn't that easily dissuaded. He tried again, "She really one of your people?"

"Yeah."

"Seems pretty pissed off at you."

"Got every right to be." He let go of the tea, looked at Jack. "Thought I'd be relieved if I ever found out anyone else had survived." He closed his eyes, leaned back. "I'm so tired. How did we get here?"

"That a philosophical question?" The Doctor's eyes snapped open, and Jack didn't like the look he got, so he hurried on. "Some stupid argument about families. Rose wanting to get some stuff. Seems a while ago now. Doesn't seem to matter much either."

"Oh, it's going to. This is her world, broken. She gets better and she's going to find she'll never be able to go home again."

Jack managed not to grin. This wasn't a joke. "None of us can, so the song says."

"But she wanted to. Or at least she wanted to be able to think she could. Now she's probably never even going to find out what happened to her mother. Her friends. And if she does, it's probably not going to be pleasant."

"She's a big girl, Doctor."

He was quiet, taking another moment to contemplate the mysteries of his cold tea. "We're going to have to start looking for diving equipment."

The door opened. Harry. Jack gave him a wave and he quickly joined him, seemed more upbeat than Jack had ever seen him before. Spoke with a smile. "She's alright. Rose, I mean. She's going to need a few hours of…actually I'm not sure what it is, but Livia sounded terribly confident that she'd be right as rain in a few days, if a bit tired."

"Good job, Harry," said Jack, grinning. "Can we go see her then?"

"Ah…" He suddenly looked very uncomfortable. A glance at the Doctor.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Go see her , Captain, I'll be okay."

"You sure?"

"I'll be along when _she's_ not, okay? Be best for everyone."

* * *

It would be longer than the Doctor thought before he saw Rose. Livia was a conscientious doctor and did not leave her patient's side until she was certain she was stable. Though what had happened to the Time Lords had stolen so much of her heritage she still had the two hearts that taunted her, and she still had the increased strength and stamina that they gave her. It would be some time before she needed to sleep.

But when she did sleep, it was in the office outside Rose's room. She would not give up her vigil. The desk was uncomfortable, but the lights were dim and she was exhausted.

It was so quiet. And when, finally, she thought she heard something, she believed, at first, that it was nothing more than a part of a dream.

"Livia."

She didn't recognise the voice, but it knew her. It was all around her. Creeping across her skin.

She was out of the chair and turning around the room, searching. "Who's there?" she asked, not allowing her own voice to betray her tiredness, or her fear.

"Livia." Softer, closer.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

But she could see nothing, and she was so very, very tired.

* * *

The door creaked open, and it was enough to wake her. "Didn't I make myself clear?" asked Livia, seeing the Doctor wander in and not even bother to look guilty.

"I've given you more than enough time to clear out," he said.

"This is my surgery," she told him.

"I'll just let Bambera know about that, shall I?"

She sighed, got up, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. "I was only asleep a few…" She glanced at her watch. "Alright, a few hours, but still, patience is a virtue."

"That's a human saying."

"And we're on Earth. I've got nothing against humanity, Doctor." She stretched her arms, let herself yawn. "She's doing well. Everything went to plan. Give her another six hours on my stunningly reconstructed life support system and she will be just fine."

The Doctor nodded. "Congratulations."

"Your gratitude is overwhelming."

"I thought you didn't want it."

"I don't." She sighed. "I need some coffee."

"Can I see her?"

"What if I say no?"

"At least I asked."

"Oh, stop trying to be polite and go in. Just don't touch anything."

The Doctor nodded, opened the door. Instantly he spun, snapped, "Livia!"

"Mmm?" She turned back, decided that she needed coffee much more than another round with the Doctor and resolved to ignore whatever it was that he complained about next.

"She's gone."

Apart from that.

She ran back into the room. Livia shook her head, the bed was empty, the modified life support equipment functioning but hooked up to nothing.

"Rose is gone," repeated the Doctor.

_end of act one: invasion_


	10. this is the visitation

_act two: absolution_

_"An apple a day keeps the Doctor away."_

_- popular saying_

"Someone's taken her." Livia tried to grasp the logistics. She hadn't left the office, and she was certain she'd have woken if anyone had entered. The Doctor was looking under the bed. She stared, disbelieving. "What are you doing?"

"Just checking."

Livia shook her head. "She hasn't rolled onto the floor, Doctor, someone has taken her."

"Is there another way out of this room?" he asked, looking around.

"Not unless you know a way to drill through rock and close it up behind you."

"As a matter of fact-"

"This is Earth and these are humans. The Cybermen…it just isn't logical. Who would have done this? What's so special about that human?"

"Nothing," said the Doctor. "She's just my friend."

"There's no such thing as _just_ your friend, Doctor. I've read your entry in the APC Net. Your friends tend to get involved in as much trouble as you do."

"Off-topic, Livia." He strode out of the room, and she hurried to catch-up.

"Where are we going?"

"_I'm_ going to see the Brigadier. This place must have some sort of security. Someone must have seen her. Don't know where you're off to."

"I don't abandon my patients, Doctor. Whoever their friends might be." She took a skipping step, just about managed to match his pace. "And if I didn't see what happened to her, what makes you think anyone else did?"

"You were asleep!"

She sniffed. "I am a very light sleeper, Doctor. I doubt anyone could just slip past me, especially when carrying a body."

"You'd be surprised." He rapped on the door to the Brigadier's office, didn't wait for a reply.

Ancelyn and Bambera were inside, and neither the Doctor nor Livia wanted to know what they'd been doing before the door burst open.

"How many times must I tell people to knock?" snapped Bambera, less than thrilled at the interruption. "What do you pair want?"

"Rose has gone," the Doctor told her.

"Oh, shame. So she wanted to have walk, so what?"

"Brigadier, she was unconscious, and she wasn't going to recover consciousness for at least another four hours," said Livia. "Someone took her from surgery. And…" She paused, sparing a glance for the Doctor before continuing. "And she made not have had the time that she needed for her recovery to be stable. We have to find her."

The Brigadier nodded, still annoyed, but now her sense of duty took over. "Ancelyn, see if anyone's left the base in the past…" She looked at Livia.

"Two hours," she supplied.

"My lady." Ancelyn bowed, left quickly.

Bambera sighed. "Alright, who could have taken her? And why?"

"It must have been someone who was known here, surely," said Livia. "As to why…" She shrugged.

The Doctor was quiet, pacing a little. "The stealth fields. If someone was using a personal stealth field, then they could have got in and out without being detected."

"Would it have hidden the girl to?" asked Bambera.

The Doctor nodded. "If they were careful."

Ancelyn reappeared. "My lady, no-one has arrived, nor has anyone departed."

"Is anyone missing?" asked Bambera.

"Not as far the duty officer is aware."

"Well, tell them to check," she said, letting him leave again. She rubbed her forehead, took a seat. "This is ridiculous. We're finally ready to fight back, and I'm worrying about finding one lost girl."

"Rose is very important to me," said the Doctor. "And this might be more important to you than you think."

"Do you know why she was taken?" asked Livia, turning her full attention to the Doctor.

He shook his head. "No. I've no idea. But when we find out it might-"

"What happened?" Jack, breathing heavily. He'd been running. Glanced from Bambera to the Doctor.

"That's what we're trying to find out, Captain," said Bambera, glancing over his shoulder to the second arrival. "Well, Ancelyn?"

"We can find no disappearances, but the duty officer will continue the checks. However, there is a vehicle missing from the garage."

"Oh, shame," muttered Bambera, growing increasingly annoyed at the number of people in her office. "Well that settles that, there's been an intruder… now where's he going?" she asked, the Doctor striding out of the room. "You stay right there!" Jack stopped in his tracks, Bambera stepped up to him, said, "You've still got a job to do here, mister. We have weapons to make, check and load. I'm not having my entire staff go off to look for that girl."

"Last time I checked," said Jack, "I wasn't on your staff."

"You've been conscripted," she said shortly. "The rest of you get back to work. There's still a war going on here."

* * *

Jack had every intention of going back to the lab where the glitter guns were being manufactured, eventually, but nothing on Earth or beyond was going to stop him from going after the Doctor when he left that room. And if Rose had gone out of the base then that's exactly where the Doctor would be heading too. Jack went straight to the garage. 

Too late. But close enough to see the chaos that the Doctor had left in his wake. Mechanics and soldiers milling around. An angry officer on the comms.

"The Doctor take off then?" asked Jack.

The officer scowled. "Couldn't care less. But he decided to sabotage every other vehicle we've got left before leaving."

It wasn't long before the Brigadier arrived, in an even worse mood than before. "What the hell's going on here?"

The officer's explanation was interrupted by Jack. "The Doctor wouldn't do that," he insisted. "Sure, he'd borrow a car to go chase Rose down, but he wouldn't leave you high and dry. Trust me." He met Bambera's eyes, saw that she agreed.

"Assuming he didn't, then that would mean that he took the only vehicle we had left. Just one working vehicle."

"And one working stealth unit," added the officer who had been on watch.

"Right. And I think this might be down to our kidnapper too."

Jack caught on quickly. "They wanted the Doctor to go after them?"

"Yes. You knew what he'd do, didn't you? Not that hard to guess. He's hardly a man of complex motives, these days anyway." Bambera gave a long-suffering sigh. "Well, the rest of us aren't going anywhere until this lot's repaired. And we'll be lucky if we know what we're doing with the stealth units…" She broke off, seemed to come to a decision. "Captain, find Dr. Sullivan, and get yourselves to the conference room."

* * *

There was tea. There was coffee. There were even biscuits, though no-one had yet taken one. No idle chit-chat, but a dull melancholy in the air. Even with the increasingly good news from the south, no-one could yet celebrate here. Not with the sudden disappearance of the Doctor, not when everyone in that room knew exactly what sort of man he was. 

The door swung open and Bambera marched in, all business. She took her seat at the head of the table, cast an eye over the men and women assembled. Such an odd mix of people, but she was used to dealing with the odd, the unexplained. That was what UNIT was all about, after all.

"You all know what's happened," said the Brigadier, taking her seat. "What I want to know is what you think we should do." She looked at each face in turn. "Our operation here can no longer be considered secure. This isn't a democracy, but I do want to hear what you have to say."

"What can we do?" said Livia. "Even getting out of the base isn't an option now."

"But who did this? Why take Rose? Just Rose." Professor Shaw plucked a biscuit off the plate, took a bite. Waited for an answer.

"It certainly doesn't fit in with the Cybermen's tactics," said Bambera. "And it wasn't anyone on the base, that's been confirmed now. No-one's missing."

"Well, we need to find her. Her treatment wasn't complete."

"How about using some of that Time Lord genius to help fix the stealth units then?" suggested Jack.

Livia scowled. "How about using some of that marvellous future knowledge to speed things along, _Captain?_"

"Not my field."

"Then, given that I'm a doctor, why would you think it was mine?"

"I thought Time Lords knew everything."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and they grew us in test tubes too. Get a grip. You're not the only one here worried about them."

"I can see those tears from here."

"Rose is my _patient_. Whatever my feelings towards the Doctor, that is a duty I take…that matters to me."

"Alright, that's enough," said Bambera, before Jack could retort. "Any more personal problems, take them outside, where I can't see them." She poured herself a mug of coffee, drank it black. "So they took Rose; the Doctor took off after them and no-one here can follow."

Liz nodded. "So it isn't Rose, it's the _Doctor_ that they want. Rose was easy bait."

"Hardly easy," said Bambera.

"Alright," agreed Liz. "Easier then. Easier than getting to the Doctor directly, anyway."

"If Merlin has left us for a trap, then he must be warned," said Ancelyn.

"I'm sure he can take care of himself," Livia said. "But Rose is still in danger."

Bambera stood up. "Captain Harkness, Livia, whatever deficiencies you feel you have in your knowledge, get down to the garage and help with those repairs. Dr. Sullivan can continue the manufacture of the glitter guns, he seems to know what he's doing. But I won't risk contacting London again until we know how our security was breached, and that means finding the Doctor, and Miss Tyler."

"And, with such limit resources, how do you propose to do that?" A voice from the tunnel that led to the conference room. Smooth and confident, but a stranger.

Bambera scowled. "Who the hell are you? I gave orders that this was a closed meeting."

"So you did. But I'm afraid you guard is now quite convinced you countermanded them. Such a simple thing to do. And the security of your little underground home is not quite so difficult to penetrate as you seem to imagine."

Bambera drew her gun. "Who are you?"

The figure tutted, stepped forward. "So quick to resort to violence. But then, why should I expect anything better from humans?"

Dark-eyed and immaculately dressed in black, he stepped from the shadows. Ancelyn turned, whispered to Bambera, "This one is like Merlin."

Bambera understood, swore under her breath. "Time Lords coming out of the woodwork now. What do you want?"

"To help."

Livia, strangely quiet, now spoke. "I remember you."

He looked at her, and she met his dark gaze unflinchingly. "And I remember you, my dear: the President's doctor. Such an pity your expertise is now irrelevant. But I see your memories have returned; the Doctor's interference, I assume?"

"Did you take them from me?"

"No," he said. "As I told you I am here simply to help. Up until now I was content to observe, but events have moved faster the I predicted and the Doctor is in danger."

"Like he wasn't before," said Jack, glanced at Livia. "Who is this guy?"

"A friend of the Doctor's; he calls himself the Master. He fought in the Time War."

He spoke. "Friend has such pejorative connotations. Suffice to say that the Doctor recruited me, somewhat reluctantly, into that unpleasant affair against my better judgement." He took at the seat at the end of the table, ignoring the gun that Bambera was still pointing at him. "Much as revealing myself to your little resistance group is."

"Then why do it?" asked Bambera.

"I told you, to help. To be specific, to help you find the Doctor, seen as you seem unable to get on with it by yourselves."

"We don't know where he's gone," said the Brigadier.

"Ah, but I do," said the Master, retrieving a small silver unit from a pocket inside his coat. He moved slowly, not giving Bambera an excuse to shoot. "This little instrument will show me exactly where the Doctor is." He slid it across the table; Jack caught it, thumbed the controls on.

"Neat," he said. "How d'you know that's him?"

"The Doctor was kind enough to share a hot beverage with me while in London. His cocoa was laced with a tracking agent, making it a simple matter for me to follow his progress."

"We still can't risk going after him without a working stealth unit," said Livia.

"Indeed not." The Master smiled. "My skills are at you disposal."

Bambera snorted. "You must really take us for fools. Ancelyn, get some soldiers in here." She gave the Master a hard look. "Well, this has all been very interesting, but your UNIT file is perfectly clear on what happens to your so-called allies and what your plans for our planet tend to involve. I wouldn't trust you further than I could throw a Cybership. So thank you very much for your offer, but no thanks. You'll be spending the rest of your time here in our very best cell."

* * *

She wasn't nervous, or, at least, not as nervous as she should be. It was, she decided, a supremely bad idea to go and speak to him, but she knew that she couldn't ignore his presence indefinitely. Not when she had questions. 

The guard let her past without much of an argument, and Livia found the Master pacing the single barred cell in the base. They'd never had much need to lock anyone up before.

"Ah, a visitor. How gratifying, though I'm afraid I'm not in a position to be much of a host." The Master regarded her from the other side of the bars, and she was careful to keep her distance. Standing as far away as she could, folding her arms.

"You escaped the…burning," she said.

"Obviously."

"How?"

"I could as you the same thing." He took a step closer to the bars. "But I think that your situation speaks for itself. I'm afraid I didn't have quite the same obstacles to overcome."

Livia nodded. "Your physiology is alien."

"But my psyche remains." He tapped his temple with a long, gloved finger. "Though, like you, I had to give up my TARDIS to remain safe."

"And you came to Earth?"

"I knew the Doctor would come back, sooner or later."

"You wanted to kill him?"

"Why ever would you think that?" he asked softly.

She gave a tight smile. "I've seen your file."

"I was under the impression I had removed my presence form the APC Net."

"Oh, they lost the records of your time-line, but that doesn't mean information can't be gathered. It made interesting reading."

"You must have been very curious to go to so much trouble."

"It was useful research. A psychiatric paper - so few Time Lords ever leave Gallifrey…" She broke off. "Ever left Gallifrey."

He tutted gently. "Ah, still grieving for a lost world."

"I didn't get the chance." She looked away, wishing she hadn't come.

"Worlds come and go, even worlds as ancient as Gallifrey. Nothing endures forever. And there's a new world right here. Ready for the taking."

Livia rolled her eyes, suddenly feeling on safer ground. "I've no interest in this planet. Beyond not dying on it."

"Really? Think about it. This world is in chaos; it needs a single strong leader to bring order. One single unified vision, and this planet could become a galactic power within a century."

"Your vision?"

"No human could conceive of planning for the centuries ahead; no human could bring the world the knowledge it needs to grow to its full potential."

"And that's what you plan to do?" she asked.

"You can't possibly want to stay on this planet forever."

"What exactly are you offering?"

"Help me, and I can help you escape."

Livia shook her head. "Even if I believed you could, this is ridiculous."

"Yes it is, but that's what you expected, isn't it?"

"What?"

He spread his hands, smiled, though neither gesture was particularly comforting. "Be assured, my dear, that the only ambition I currently have is to find the Doctor."

She swallowed, turned to go. "I don't believe you."

* * *

"I'm sorry," said Bambera, "but after the messages I've received from London, joining with the other resistance groups has to be our priority." 

"You still haven't found out who breached your security," said Jack.

"Right now, that's not important. I have to use every available resource to get my troops to the city."

"What about the Doctor?" demanded Jack. "After everything he's done for you and everyone on this planet, you can't just abandon him."

"My first duty is my country and my world, Captain Harkness. The Doctor knew what he was doing when he went out there. And he knows damn well how to take care of himself."

He had thought she would be reasonable if he caught her alone, without having to hold up the morale of her staff. He had thought she understood. "Brigadier, I won't just abandon them."

She didn't move an inch. "I can't help you."

"At least give me the Master's tracking device. If you're not going after him, you've got no use for it."

"Professor Shaw wants to take a look at it. Any advanced technology could give us an edge over the Cybermen. The edge we need to win this war."

"I've already given you tech centuries ahead of what you have!" he exclaimed.

"And we're very grateful."

"Just not grateful enough to give anything back." He was angry, angry enough to do something really stupid. He controlled himself with an effort. "Is there anything you can do, Brigadier? Please?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, but the Doctor's on his own."

* * *

Jack found Livia in a corner of the garage, working by herself, an island of calm. Cross-legged on the cave floor, pieces of a sabotaged stealth unit laid out in front of her. 

"Thought you couldn't fix it?" he said, crouched down next to her.

She poked at a non-descript length of coiled wire. "Can't. I was never very interested in engineering. But Bambera won't take no for an answer." She looked up at him. "How's it going your end?"

Jack grinned. "I, ah, got some help."

Livia raised an eyebrow. "You didn't…?"

"Come on, I thought you had some sacred duty to your patient. You want to find them, so do I. Bambera's being paranoid."

"She's got every reason to be." Livia lowered her voice. "She was right; he's extremely dangerous." She glanced at a passing soldier, let him move away before she spoke again. "What did you do?"

"Gave him one of the damaged stealth units to fix."

"He won't. He'll be out of that cell within the hour and we'll never see him again. Unless he gets it into his head to kill us."

"I don't think so. He seemed as desperate to find the Doctor as you are to find Rose."

"I'm not…" She coughed lightly. "Look, if Bambera finds out what you've done.."

"She's not going to."

"This base is under a military governorship. She could have you shot for treason. And me."

"That's not going to happen. And he's not going to disappear." Jack reached into his pocket, pulled out the Master's tracking device. "Bambera had it put in storage"

"And you just had to steal it."

"The Master's not going anywhere without it. Besides, I'm not staying here, not when the Doctor and Rose are out there and might need my help."

"You steal anything else?" she asked.

"Not yet. What d'you think we might need?"

"For goodness sake, _Captain_, there's a war on. This planet-"

"-will take care of itself. I'm from the future, remember? It'll turn out alright for Earth. But the Doctor and Rose are still in danger. So you in?"

"This is a terrible idea," muttered Livia.

"That's a yes, right?" adding his most charming grin.

She considered, not meeting his eyes when she spoke again. "I'll need to pack some things from the surgery."

Jack nodded. "Right. The Master seemed to think he'd be finished with the stealth unit within the hour."

"More than enough time." She paused. "You able to check the thing's working once he's done with it?"

"I think so."

"And make sure you get all the equipment back."

"All right, all right. Gee, just relax, okay?"

"Don't trust him, Jack."

"Right now, the only people I trust on this planet are the Doctor and Rose."

Livia smiled. "You're smarter than you look."

* * *

The Doctor drove. 

Instinct more than knowledge. He knew where Cybercontrol would be and that was exactly where he was going. To the centre, to the heart, where he should have gone in the first place.

Where he would have gone, once.

And I will be the humblest Doctor of them all, he liked to think he had said to himself. Because he mattered less than anyone else at all, and the days when nobody died had seemed to drift and flounder and finally stop altogether. Unafraid and once more unto the breach again, again, whenever he could offer a hand to one who was falling, no matter how far he had to fall himself.

Arrogance, once the enemy, now his ally and he had refused to listen. Ignorance and improvisation, and, oh yes, the danger.

Then there was Rose. Rose, who he had to save. Rose who had been plucked so neatly from his grasp.

And I simply will not be beaten, he sang to himself inside his head. A Time Lord, never too old to learn new tricks. Still, he couldn't make the car go any faster and wished for a magic carpet. Or his TARDIS. Any TARDIS, and the beautiful song of their flight through the possibilities of time.

He had made a promise to keep her safe and he had meant it. Lose the world and save Rose and, yes, he could live with that. Somewhere, someone inside his head pointed out that that might not be the right way to go about making amends, but he was driving too fast to listen to any passengers.

* * *

Livia was trying not to look nervous, but from the looks of the passing soldiers was beginning to suspect she was a very poor actress. Jack was taking too long, and the duty shift was changing. Maybe that was what he was waiting for. The garage was certainly a lot quieter and was really paying her much attention any more. 

The car in front of her, the car they were going to steal, didn't look very sturdy. She was sure they had looked a lot less flimsy before, and she wondered what she was comparing it too.

"Do internal combustion engines explode?" she murmured to herself.

"Exactly how long have you live on Earth for?" asked Jack, and Livia refused to acknowledge that he had surprised her.

Instead she paused, considering. "I'm not really sure. A couple of years, at least. The memories just sort of fade away rather than stopping."

"And how many cars have you seen explode?"

"Quite a lot. On the telly anyway."

Jack sighed. "Didn't you think about this before you…got your memories back?" He spoke lightly, ignored his own worries, doubts, his own gap in his memories.

"No," she said, a little sadly. "That's the problem. There's an awful lot of things that I never used to think about that are now worrying me a great deal. It's rather disturbing."

"Well, you don't have to worry about this," Jack reassured her. "It's not going to explode."

"Are you driving?" she asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"He is not, I am." Neither of them had heard the Master's approach. They exchanged a glance, Livia's look condemnatory. Jack shrugged.

"Guess I missed something," he said.

Livia sighed, turned to the Master. "I don't think you have a licence," she said.

"My dear, I don't think any of us do. And if you wish to stand here and argue trivialities, please do. But I am leaving. If you're coming, I suggest you get in. Quickly."

She frowned. "What's the-"

The sound of running. Soldiers' boots. Jack opened the passenger side door, leapt neatly inside. "Get in, Livia!"

She jumped inside, fastened her seatbelt. "Great. Burning more bridges."

The Master started the engine, swung the car around, heading for the exit with no intention of stopping for anything. "I'm sure they'll learn to live with it. But once you told the Brigadier who I was, did you really imagine she'd ever let me walk free?"

"If you hadn't been intent on making such a dramatic entrance maybe I wouldn't have been so surprised. She _liked_ me before."

"And if you two could pretend to be friends for five minutes that would really help my navigation skills," said Jack, his eyes on the scanner and not mentioning the fact that the Brigadier probably wasn't too thrilled that he'd borrowed a couple of glitter guns either. "Right. Got him. And he's travelling pretty fast."

"If the good Doctor's going to exceed the speed limit, then so must we," said the Master, moving up another gear.

And the car rushed out of the caves, into bright sunlight and a clear day.


	11. this is the chase

_"One day, I shall come back…"  
"Too late, grandfather, there's nothing left now."_

- The Doctor and Susan

"They've done _what!"_

Winifred was as angry as Ancelyn could ever recall. Her temper had not ever been particularly long and the past few months had shortened it considerably, but even now he saw, with some pride, that she did not let it better her.

She took a deep breath. "Can we go after them?"

"Not if we wish to remain undetected by our enemy," he told her.

She chewed her bottom lip, glanced at Harry. "Did you know anything about this?"

"Certainly not." Flustered, but not guilty, still Winifred was not so quick to accept his word.

"You and the Captain seemed to be getting along rather well."

Harry sighed, a little huff. "Brigadier, if I had helped him I would tell you. But I didn't."

She nodded, sat down at her desk. "Alright." A glance at Ancelyn. "With those three gone is there any chance we can repair the stealth units?"

"The professor is not optimistic."

Another nod, more deliberate. "Then to hell with this. I'm not sitting around in this rat-hole while we've got people fighting in London. Get everyone ready to move out. If we're going down, we're going down fighting."

* * *

The roads really were in remarkably good repair, all things considered. And it was a very nice day, sunny and bright and blue. No traffic either, obviously, which, actually, would have been terribly useful for helping to distract one from the fact that however skilled the driver was there was no way to prevent the, possibly genetic, fear that occurred when travelling at this sort of speed in a vehicle so primitive.

"Could we slow down?" Livia thought desperately for an excuse. "This medical equipment is very delicate."

"And will be of absolutely no use if we do not catch up with the Doctor," said the Master, not missing a beat, but taking the time to glance in the mirror, catching Livia's eyes.

She sat back in the seat, one hand clinging to the seatbelt, and resisted the temptation to close her eyes and hide from the rushing scenery.

"You got any idea where the Doctor's heading?" asked Jack.

"Oh, that's easy, Captain. He's heading to the heart of the problem, to Cybercontrol."

"And how do you know that?" Livia said.

"The Doctor is very predictable." He smiled, a private joke. "Besides we tend to think alike."

"But it won't be on Earth. In orbit, or the moon if they were feeling particularly vulnerable," she said. "So somehow he's found a spaceship?"

Jack glanced back at her. "The Brigadier told us where they'd landed when we were in London. Pretty detailed layout of the base too."

"Oh, great," said Livia. "So we're heading smack into the middle of an army?"

"Not quite," the Master told her. "The humans seem to have finally taken the initiative. I imagine the Cybermen will be quite distracted, allowing the Doctor, and ourselves, to slip past."

"And that's where he thinks Rose is? Cybercontrol?" she said.

"It would seem so."

Livia leaned forward. "You know, don't you? You know who took her."

"No." He relented a little. "Though I do have some rather nasty suspicions."

She sat back, closed her eyes. Tired.

Somewhere, between waking and sleeping, she remembered a voice. Her name, and…

"What was that?" Livia looked around, alert, suddenly afraid, and drawing a curious look from Jack.

"You were sleeping. Dreaming. Nothing's changed."

"I don't dream," she muttered. "I…sorry…forget it." She stared determinedly out the window, careful to keep her thoughts from her expression. I remember, she thought, I remember that voice and my name and…_someone_ was there. Someone took Rose and they knew me.

Thunder. No, an engine. Rumbling with the tell-tale metallic ring of a primitive engine. Livia searched the skies. "Look!"

"That's got to be a good sign," said Jack as the planes flew overhead. "Didn't realise they had any left." He looked down at the scanner. "Wait, wait, the Doctor…he's stopped."

"Stopped breathing or stopped moving?" asked the Master.

"Guess."

_"Captain."_

"He's stationary, a good thirty miles away. Still not at the Cybermen's base though."

"Then either the Cybermen have stopped him, in which case there is little we can do, or the humans have. And I'm quite sure he'll be able to talk his way out of that. Either way, it makes no difference, we must reach that ship."

* * *

He hadn't even noticed them until the warning shot, but then their van had been under the cover of a stealth shield. His own vehicle, however, had been visible for some time. It seemed that the saboteur had had a chance to damage the unit installed in the car after all. Though they had not quite finished the job.

"Get out of the car!"

A sergeant, all nerves and pasty white skin. The Doctor wasn't confident of his ability to shoot straight, or refrain from shooting someone who obviously wasn't a threat. He didn't have the heart to argue, and followed the sergeant's instructions wordlessly. Waiting whilst the private reported in.

"Sir!" He ran up, almost smiling. "Greyhound has confirmed his identity. We're to bring him in."

"Right." The sergeant nodded.

The Doctor turned, very slowly and keeping his hands up. "That means you can stop pointing the gun at me now."

"Oh, right. Sorry."

The Doctor grinned. As good a mask as any. "Well done. Now let's get this over with."

* * *

Despite his age, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart couldn't bring himself to sit back in the London HQ with the Prime Minster. If there was going to be a fight for his world, then he wanted to be out there, right in the middle of it, with his soldiers.

The mobile UNIT HQ gave him an overview of their entire operation and indicated a lull in the storm. Of course, that was about to be broken: his guest had arrived.

The doors banged open. The Doctor. Hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. Face dark. The anger was rather unjustified, the Brigadier felt, given that the Doctor's path would have taken him straight into a Cyberman patrol.

"Doctor…" he began.

"Whatever it is, no. You seem to be doing just fine by yourselves, and I have to find Rose. So if you could just give me a car with a working stealth unit, that would be great."

"You were heading straight into the heart of Cyberman controlled territory."

"I know. I'm trying to get to Cybercontrol."

"May I ask why?"

"Rose. Someone's taken her. Because they want to get to me. And I was so busy keeping out of the way and hoping you lot could take care of yourselves that I refused to see what was going on."

"Which is?"

The Doctor stepped forward, his eyes fixed intently on the Brigadier. "I haven't time for this. I haven't time to save the world. That's up to you, Brigadier. I have to save _her_. Let me go."

And the Brigadier smiled at his oldest friend and offered his hand. It wasn't as though he had ever been able to change the Doctor's mind once it was set. "Good luck, Doctor," he said, as the Doctor accepted his hand. "I'll see you soon."

* * *

It was obscenely quiet. Still. Dull metal structures and all the silence in-between.

"And what happens when we get out of the car?" asked Livia.

"I imagine that the Cybermen will respond," the Master told her.

"Oh good." She checked the medical equipment again. Well-packed and secure, but it wasn't light and she knew she couldn't carry both it and a gun.

"The Doctor should be here in five," said Jack.

"Then we'll let him choose the ship," the Master said. "And we'll wait."

* * *

The Doctor pulled the UNIT vehicle to a stop at the edge of the Cyberman base. There was more than one spaceship here, but the one he had chosen lay some distance from the heart of the base and appeared in good repair. All ready for launch.

One last look about and he ran. Silence. Except for his footsteps on metal. Familiar technology, familiar layout. Penetrating the ship was easy.

But they knew, they must have known, and when he noticed that the storage hold held nothing but hibernating Cybermen he felt the beat of his hearts increase. He risked the transport tube, took it all the way to the bridge.

Empty. Powered down. But he could soon fix that. So spartan, dull metal and the quiet blink of pale lights. There were two exits other than the transport tube, and no way to secure either quickly.

First things first, he decided and turned to the launch controls.

They knew, of course they knew. He'd have to override.

The sound of metal. The soft spin of the door. There was no-where to hide.

"Oh, hello," said the Doctor.

The Cyberman said nothing. Raised its arm, the blaster levelled at the Doctor's chest.

An arc of golden light shot forward, striking the Cyberman in its chest unit. It fell forward, an electronic scream signalling its death.

Jack, glitter gun in hand, ran onto the bridge. "Just in time," he said, flashing a grin. "You weren't going to leave without me, were you?"

The Doctor didn't smile back. He shook his head a little. "I had to go. Jack, she's…"

"Hey, relax." Jack stepped forward, reaching out, not quite embracing the Doctor, but his hands were on his shoulders and the Doctor didn't object. "I get it, okay? But I'm here now, and we can go rescue her together, alright?"

"Thanks," said the Doctor, a quiet murmur. A noise by the door, and Jack looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Who's that?"

"Ah, I had some help getting here," he said, as Livia and the Master arrived on the bridge.

"Well, Rose is going to need to finish her treatment," said Livia, but all the Doctor's attention was on the second arrival.

"You," he said simply, taking two shorts steps forward, but suddenly Jack was in his way. "Move," ordered the Doctor, not taking his eyes from the Master.

"No, Doctor. Now I know there's some history with you two, but we would never have got here without his help."

"Hardly surprising. He's probably behind this whole thing."

The Master stepped round Jack, facing the Doctor, utterly nonplussed. "How soon we forget," he said. "I thought we had come to an understanding, Doctor. And yet here you are, falling back into old patterns without the slightest provocation from me."

"Rose-"

"I'm here to help you, Doctor. I did so before and I will do so now."

"I thought you were dead."

A single raised eyebrow, and the barest hint of a smile. "A mistake you've often made."

"What are you doing here?" A disbelief, and the Master knew the question that he was asking.

"My TARDIS was destroyed, and no survivor of your burning could risk travelling in time. No-one except you. And I knew that you'd eventually come back to Earth, so here I am."

"You were waiting for me?

"For six years. I believe I missed you once or twice but now, here we are."

"Here we are," repeated the Doctor, folding his arms. "But someone knows more than what they're saying."

"Doctor, I-"

"Not you," he said. "You." He looked at Livia.

"I…Doctor, I'm here to help Rose. I promise you," she protested.

"Yeah, and what else?"

She looked down, unable to meet his gaze. "I didn't know before. I would have said something." She glanced up, saw him waiting. Took a breath. "I heard a voice. Before she was taken. In the room outside the surgery someone was calling my name. I don't know who. I don't _remember._"

The Doctor looked at the Master, but he merely shrugged, said, "Nothing to do with me, I assure you."

"Alright. we've wasted enough time." He turned back to the launch controls. "Jack, get over here." And over his shoulder, to the Master, "Get those doors sealed, there could be more sentries."

"We dealt with quite a few of them," he said, but followed the Doctor's suggestion.

The ship shook. Livia stumbled, but did not let any of the medical equipment fall. The Doctor seemed not to notice. "Ready?"

"That was weapons fire," said Jack. "I don't think we can complete an orbit launch with-"

"Doesn't matter," snapped the Doctor, shoving Jack aside, adjusting the controls himself.

The ship came alive, the engines humming through the metal. And without a word of warning from the Doctor the sky went rushing past.

The crash wasn't as bad as what it could have been. Apart from a few bruises, nobody was hurt. As Livia checked that nothing in the med-pack had been damaged, the Doctor said, "Storage holds been jettisoned. No more problems with the Cybermen."

"That's a little optimistic, don't you think?" muttered Livia, standing up. "What was that for?"

"We couldn't complete an orbit launch," said the Doctor. "But we could make a terrestrial one."

"No more Cybermen knocking on the door then?" said Jack.

"And how much damage have you done to this thing?" Livia asked.

"Ah." The Doctor paused, took a look over the launch controls. "Well, more than enough experience between us to get it all sorted out in an hour or two." He grinned, fished his sonic screwdriver from his coat. "Let's get to work."

* * *

Livia didn't realise the Master was there until she noticed the shadow standing over her. Soldering wires was hardly the most skilled work required to make the ship space worthy, but it did require a steady hand. After listening carefully to the Doctor's instructions, she worked on her own whilst the others dealt with the more complex repair problems they faced.

"What do you want?" she asked, not bothering to look up.

"To talk."

"I'm busy, and you should be too."

"Are you really that concerned about finding that human?"

"Yes."

"Because she's your patient." It wasn't a question.

Livia stood up, turned to face him. "And what's wrong with that?"

"You do seem to take your oaths to a dead society very seriously."

She frowned, irritated at being asked to defend her actions. "I believed in them then; I believe in them now. What does it matter to you?"

The Master didn't answer her question, said instead, "Have you considered what will happen once this is over?"

"I go home," she said simply.

"Home?" he echoed.

"Yes, I had a perfectly acceptable life on this planet before the Cybermen came…and before I got my memories back."

"And that's enough, knowing what you do now?"

She spoke crisply. "I believe we've already had this discussion."

"A jest, nothing more" He smiled, not unpleasantly but it was hardly reassuring. "You don't want to stay on Earth."

She was quiet, considered returning to work, ignoring him until he went away. "No, I don't," she admitted. "Not now."

"And?"

"And the Doctor has his TARDIS. That's a way off of this world to somewhere a little more civilised. Somewhere where I can do some good without having to work with such primitive medicine or risk upsetting the technological evolution of this planet."

"You'd risk it then? Travel with him, in one of our ships?"

"I don't see any other choice." She smiled, understanding. "But then, that's why you're here, isn't it?"

"Very perceptive."

"Well?"

"How much do you know about Captain Harkness?"

Livia shrugged. "He travels with the Doctor; he's from the future."

"He was a Time Agent," the Master told her.

She frowned. "The lesser races have always meddled with time travel, if they want to give themselves pretentious titles…"

"Like Lord?"

"No other race ever mastered time travel."

"Or the same finesse with arrogance. How gratifying to see you have not cast off all your heritage."

Her grip on the soldering laser tightened. "If you had a point, I suggest you make it."

He smiled easily. She was angry, but hardy disposed to violence. He knew that she was no threat. "Captain Harkness was a Time Agent with access to reliable temporal technology. Ships with the ability to travel through time and space without the Rassilon imprimatur or an equivalent genetic marker in the operator."

"Ah, and so with access to one of these ships-"

"The freedom of time and space. Not as efficient or accurate as Gallifreyan technology, but quite sufficient for its purpose."

"You have one of these ships then?"

The Master shook his head. "Not yet, but I intend to get one. There have been several temporal incursions on this planet over the past six years. There will be more."

"Fine, but what does this have to do with me? You don't need my help to steal a ship."

"No," the Master conceded. "But there is another matter." He paused, seemed almost uncomfortable. "You're aware of my physiology?"

"You mean your body-snatching?" Her voice was tinted with disgust. "Yes."

"You think I find it appealing? I do what I have to do to survive. But I do want to be free of it."

"Ah." Livia nodded, silent a moment in thought. "Well, it would be possible to create a Gallifreyan body on this world. Given time."

"How much time?"

"However long it takes to develop the tools required for the technique. This is not an advanced society," she said. "But there are problems. I cannot recreate Rassilon's legacy, I cannot give the body the ability to regenerate, or give it the symbiotic nuclei. One body, one life and in one time." She smiled ruthfully. "Else I might have considered it an option."

"Well, one must begin somewhere. And this alternative is quite acceptable."

"I didn't say I would help you."

"You want off this world; I would not be unwilling to have a useful passenger once I have acquired a time-ship."

"No," she said shortly. "I'm well aware of how very dead your allies tend to end up. If I agree to this, then I want my own ship and I want it before I complete any treatment."

"Acquiring a second ship should be a great deal easier than acquiring a first." The Master gave a slight bow. "I agree to you proposition."

"There's one other thing," she said. "Creating a body is a simple matter with the right tools, but transferring consciousness is a little more…problematic."

"Let me worry about that, my dear."

"In that case, I want to know how you intend to achieve it," said Livia.

"The same as last time, through the power of the Source, the organising principle of the Traken Union."

"Traken," murmured Livia. "The planet still exists then?"

"It depends when you mean," and Livia was chilled by his tone. "It survived the Time War, but was destroyed in 1984, Earth time, of course."

"So the first thing is to acquire a time-ship." She paused, not wishing to think that far ahead. Not yet. "But Rose comes first."

"Oh, naturally," said the Master. "We wouldn't want to disappoint the Doctor now, would we?"

* * *

"Ready?" The Doctor was grinning, seeming to take delight at the prospect of the danger that faced them all. He stood over the main bridge controls, captain of the cybership.

"I don't know if you've noticed," said Livia. "But there aren't any restraints."

"Cybermen don't need them," the Doctor told her. "Must use some sort of magnetism to secure themselves if they're piloting."

"Well, that's absolutely super for them, but what are we going to do?" she asked.

The Doctor's grin seemed to widen. "Hold on tight."

Jack was a little more reassuring. "We're just going for a close orbit, the g-forces shouldn't be that bad."

"Oh. Good."

"Hey, at least you don't have to be standing up when we take-off," said Jack.

"Small comfort," she replied.

"Are you sure you don't want me to assist?" asked the Master.

The Doctor snorted. "Yeah, right. Who am I going to trust my life to, you or Jack? Ignition on."

"Engines hot," said Jack. "Reaction's steady. You sure about those calculations?"

"Well, if I'm wrong, we'll soon find out. Launch in five…four…three…"

Livia closed her eyes, pretended she was anywhere else at all.

* * *

Oh, dear reader, but what of Rose? Through all this, we have seen neither hide nor tail of our so-called heroine, and, perhaps, we should discover where Fate has placed her on this great board where we draw our tale.

Rose, dear Rose, is sleeping. Is she well? I know not. Medicine is certainly not my forte, and I must trust to the diagnosis of my players. Soon, however, Rose will wake and perhaps she will give some comment of her own on the state of her health. Perhaps she will tell us what aches and pains and maladies she feels she is suffering from. But, for now, we must be content with the simple fact that she is indeed alive.

Ah, and here is the event that signals the end of her rest. Not woken by the kiss of some prince or of any other who might take on the role of her rescuer, she wakes instead to the soft shriek of metal against metal. 


	12. this is survival

_"So free will isn't an illusion after all."_

The Doctor, Inferno

this is survival

A metal box. One side scraping metal spinning away, opening into a darkness.

Rose struggled to her feet, instinctively backing against the wall. Dizzy. And, no, she was not going to throw up. Whatever it was she was-

"Rose!"

She choked back a sob of relief. From the darkness, the Doctor. And he held her now, and would never let her go.

"Let me see her."

Rose knew that voice, looked up to see the others emerge. Jack, and she smiled at him over the Doctor's shoulder, and Livia and another that she did not recognise.

Livia took her away from the Doctor, helped her sit down. She found the strength to stop Livia's hand as it came towards her neck, a hypodermic needle clasped in her fingers.

The Doctor by her side, crouching, her hand encased in his again. "It's alright, she's a doctor." A strange little smile. "She's going to help you, alright? Got to make sure the treatment's sorted you out."

"Right," whispered Rose, with the smallest nod. She didn't flinch as she felt the metal sink into her skin. The Doctor was here and her fingers tightened around his.

She felt Livia's cool fingers on her wrist, her neck. A light in her eyes and she tried not to blink. "See if you can drink this," she said, offering her a flask. Rose drank, and it tasted like stale water.

And perhaps she dozed a little then, sleeping easily as the Doctor held her close.

"How is she?" asked the Doctor.

Livia nodded, tidying away her equipment. "As well as can be expected. She'll be a little drowsy for a day or two. Stamina, strength and so forth, all depleted." She looked up, smiled. "Bed rest, Doctor, is what's required." She glanced back at the airlock, now closed and sealed again. "And since we have found her, can we return to Earth now?"

The Doctor didn't look her in the eye, said, "No, we can't. I have to finish this."

She sighed, exasperated. "For pity's sake, we've found the girl. This station is bound to be crawling with Cybermen. The safest course of action-"

"Don't you get it?" snapped the Doctor. "We've found her. Right here, at the airlock. All safe and sound, no guard, no security. Don't you want to know why? Aren't you curious?"

"No," she said.

The Doctor stood up, releasing Rose's hand, checking to make sure he did not disturb her light sleep. "I was practically invited to come here, and I'm not leaving until I know why."

"You'd walk into a trap knowing it was there," said Livia, not bothering to hide her contempt. "You arrogant fool."

"What about your memories?" he said.

"I don't-"

"You were a very convenient addition to Bambera's resistance group. Lucky that a Time Lord with the skills to save Rose just so happened to be in the right place and time, isn't it?"

"Doctor, I have helped you in good faith," she said. "I don't appreciate you implying otherwise."

"Yeah, and I believe you. But I don't think you being there was a coincidence." He stepped forward. "Don't you want to know the truth?" he asked her, voice sharp as a knife.

Still, Livia did not relent. "My first duty is to my patient. Rose is in no condition to go wandering around this place."

But Rose had heard them, and her eyes were open again, watching. "I want to stay," she said, struggling to her feet. Jack moved to help her. "I'm staying with the Doctor."

"And what about you?" the Doctor asked the Master.

"Oh, I intend to see this through, Doctor. This invasion has been a hindrance to my plans and I will see it ended."

The Doctor nodded. "Good. Then let's get one of these doors open then."

"Who's he?" Rose asked Jack, keeping her voice low as the Master and the Doctor attempted to open one of the locked doors.

"Old friend of the Doctor's, I think," Jack murmured back

"They went to school together," Livia told them, watching the other two Time Lords work on the door's circuitry. In tandem. A team. No need to talk, barely even looking at one another. "And they fought together in the Time War. I believe they tried to kill each other in-between." Rose stared at her, disbelieving. Livia shrugged. "Wouldn't worry about it. Not when there are hundreds of Cybermen on this station."

The door rolled back. The Doctor and Master exchanged a short lived congratulations. But the Cybermen on the other side were swiftly cut down by Jack, glitter gun in hand. "Let's be a little more careful, shall we?" he said, stepping forward, checking the corridor ahead.

* * *

"We need to take a break," said the Doctor.

"Doctor-" The Master controlled his irritation with an effort.

"Rose is tired."

"And she's going to stay tired until she is allowed to rest properly," Livia told him.

"Can't you give her anything?" asked the Doctor. He glanced at Rose. "I mean, if you want something-"

"S'alright." She nodded. "Please?"

"Here." Livia passed a blister pack of pills to her. "Take one."

"What are they?" asked Rose, popping one onto her mouth.

"Caffeine pills." She sighed at Rose's look. "Best I can do, I'm afraid. At least you'll be able to stay awake."

"This place is far too quiet," said Jack.

"Naturally," the Master said. "After all the trouble they've taken to get the Doctor here, they don't want to kill him. Not when he's so eagerly taken the bait."

Jack frowned. "We've found Rose."

"But it's curiosity that's always been his weakness."

The Doctor sat down next to Rose, and she was warm beside him. A little feverish, a little flushed. And she was very tired. "You going to be okay?" He stole a look at Livia, spoke very quietly. "You don't have to stay."

She smiled, an effort but it reached her eyes. "Yeah, but I want to." Her eyes fell, but her hand reached out to him. "I thought I'd lost me. I thought I'd lost you, because I couldn't remember. And I still don't think I can. Like, there's bits missing. Inside my head."

He squeezed her hand. "When we get out of here, you'll get all the rest you need. I promise. However long it takes."

They walked, they rested. The silence never stopped and nobody dared compare the station to a tomb.

Jack leaned back against the wall. "I feel like we've been wandering these corridors for days."

"We are not _wandering_," the Doctor said. "We are following the shortest possible route to the centre of this station."

"And what's at the centre?" asked Livia.

"The Cybercontroller," the Master told her.

* * *

The Doctor held up his hand, drawing the little group to a halt. "Almost there," he said. He pointed to the next ramp, leading to a sealed door, no different to any of the others they had passed without comment. "I'd expected some sort of welcoming party."

Quietly, the Master dropped to the back of the group. Not a coward, but his own survival was his highest priority. Careful now.

The Doctor knocked on the door. An almost farcical action, but his expression was perfectly serious.  
"Hello! Anybody home?"

The door rolled back, and the Doctor, Rose by his side, stepped inside, followed by Jack. Livia hovered by the opening, stared into the dim light as a figure emerged from the shadows. Silhouetted, an arm and hand, at least, shone with a dull gleam of silver.

"At last," the figure said.

And Livia recognised the voice. "That's not possible," was her quiet protest, before the figure moved far too quickly and the flash of a red energy bolt shot from the blaster it held in the silver hand..

But the impact she felt was not in her chest. Instead a solid weight pushed her to one side as the door spun closed. She hit the metal decking, cried out in pain as she heard the crunch of her bones.

The Master stood up, dusted himself down. "If we are going to work together, you are going to have to learn discretion."

"I…" She winced as she moved her arm. Not broken, but badly bruised. "Thank you."

"A temporal lock. I don't think we'll be joining the Doctor," said the Master, examining the sealed doorway.

Livia stood up. "I remember," she said. "The voice I heard, I remember what it said."

"Well, better late than never, I suppose." The Master glanced at the door. "Though I'm sure the Doctor would disagree right now."

* * *

The Doctor stepped forward, his eyes adjusting to the dim lighting, all his attention focussed on the control room's single occupant.

A flash. White bright.

Lights.

The reveal.

The controller stepped forward. Not like any other Cybercontroller he had ever seen. Flesh one side, metal the other and the face a grotesque mask of skin melted into the living machine. Neatly dressed, such a strange thing, and still thoroughly identifiable.

"I don't understand," the Doctor said, head shaking, and suddenly it was Rose who was supporting him. "Romana, what are you doing here? Where's-"

"I _am_ the controller, Doctor. And I have been waiting for you a very long time indeed."

* * *

"She…she's dead," said Livia. "The President is dead."

"Apparently not." The Master seemed wholly unconcerned, but Livia refused to believe his expression.

"And that technology in there…it looked…it looked Gallifreyan."

The Master raised an eyebrow, and amusement twisted his lips. "But did you recognise what it was?"

* * *

"Doctor, what's going on?" Rose held him, he held her, and he was going to fall but she couldn't, wouldn't, let him.

Jack stepped forward, the glitter gun drawn and aimed. "Right now, I'm not that bothered. I want that door open."

The controller, Romana, stared at him a moment, shook her head. "Do you see a cybernetic breathing unit, Captain Harkness? I use my own lungs. That gun will not harm me."

"Romana…" The Doctor, and an appeal.

She was gentle, helped him to sit, though Rose recoiled from her. "You are as tired as the girl," she said.

"What's happened to you?" he asked.

"Where should I start?" replied Romana. "You and I have been friends, Doctor. I don't want to lie to you, not now. What do you want to know?" She held up a hand, silencing his question. "Tell your friend to put away the gun."

The Doctor glanced at Jack. Request reluctantly granted, Romana stood back, surveyed the three of them.

"Tell me," said the Doctor.

Romana nodded, began, "Time is such a very difficult thing to deal with when one is forced to work with a linear sequence. But I knew how careful I had to be. A handful of scattered survivors, Doctor. And none of us what we used to be." She indicated her left arm, her cybernetic arm. "I made what I could of the situation. I…survived."

She turned away, taking the platform above the sunken floor where the Doctor sat with Rose. "It came as something of a surprise when I discovered you were alive, Doctor. Alive and well and still travelling with your TARDIS, your companions, still interfering. No different to all that had gone before."

"That's not true," he whispered. "I…I grieved."

"Did you indeed?" she said, her voice ice cold. "So you grieved for the world you destroyed? The world you abandoned? The world that even dared to call you home once a lifetime?" She looked down at him. "How gratifying it must have been to finally be free."

"It wasn't like that," he insisted.

Romana's voice softened. "I suppose not. After all, the rebel must have something to rebel against. Instead, you were orphaned. The last Time Lord. The coward. The traitor." And then, gentle as a caress, "The murderer."

The Doctor pulled himself to his feet, letting Rose's hand slip from his. The tiredness swept from him, cast back by righteous anger. "The past. It's happened. Deal with it."

"Like you did?" She cast a disparaging look at Rose. "Should I adopt one too, take it to see its own world die? Risk its fragile life at every opportunity I get because I'm too afraid to stop running, to look back, because I might see that my causes have had some effects I find unpalatable?"

"_It_ has a name." Rose, and her own justified anger.

"I'm sorry," said Romana. "Miss Tyler, Rose, I have nothing but sympathy for you. I did not mean to insult you."

"Keep it," Rose snapped. "What the hell are you doing to my planet?"

Romana almost laughed, and perhaps she intended to, but the situation required gravity. And she had been a politician, after all. "Ah, the crux of the issue." She half-turned to a control panel, caught a movement in her peripheral vision, swung round, levelling her blaster. "Stay back," she warned Jack, quite calmly.

"You invaded Earth," said the Doctor. "You killed millions, enslaved tens of thousands."

"Hundred of thousands, actually."

"How could you? Romana…how could you? This is Earth, this is…we were here, together, don't you remember? Doesn't that matter to you? All of those people, all of those people and you, sitting up here, watching over it all. What's happened to you?"

"Doctor-"

"What gave you the right to play god?" He took a step forward. The anger rippled through his voice. "Why are you doing this? This planet…billions of people…"

"You _hypocrite_," she snarled. "How dare you, _Doctor_. Healer of the sick, but your solution was to kill the infection by killing the patient. _You_ took it upon yourself to condemn our entire species to death."

"To save _everything_! It wasn't a _choice_, Romana."

"Of course it was," she said, her voice suddenly light. "There's always another choice, another option, always something else that you can do. _You_ taught me that, Doctor. You taught me that and I trusted you implicitly." Her mouth tightened into a smile. "I trusted you to come back to Earth eventually. No-where else ever quite attracted you so much."

"No." He shook his head. "You didn't do this…not all this…not for…"

"_All_ for you, Doctor," confirmed Romana. "I broke humanity to find you. And, oh, you haven't made it easy. I gave you old friends, a resistance with a fighting chance, and your favourite planet on a precipice. And still, you'd have let it fall. Because of the girl. I hadn't realised just how damaged you had been by the fall-out, by your regeneration."

"_I'm_ in a perfectly sound state of mind, thank you very much."

"Oh no, Doctor. You'd have given up the world for her, I think. I offered you a simple problem, but you chose to stay back, to keep from direct interference - some penitent streak that you've developed? - and I was forced to take direct action. Tempt you with a far more obvious bait." She stepped forward. "And you came to me. Finally. I've been waiting such a long time."

"So now what?" asked the Doctor. "What you've done to Earth, you'll never undo it…what you've become…"

"Not quite correct. Don't you recognise this place? Don't you know what it is?"

And so the Doctor understood at last. "You can't possibly-"

"_You_ played god, Doctor. And it is the people that create gods. I am the last representative of the Gallifreyan people, I am their President, and I will unmake you."

* * *

The bodies of dead Cybermen lay around them. The Master was a very efficient shot.

"I don't think we're welcome any longer," he said when no more of their enemy appeared. Livia lowered the Cybergun she had been forced to use.

"So now what? What was it in there?"

"I believe the official term is the Oubliette of Eternity. At least, that was what they called the one on Gallifrey. Rather poetic, given its function."

"That's…no, she wouldn't. She's the President…"

The Master regarded her distress with indifference. "Whatever that woman's intentions, there is little we can do about it. We haven't any way to get through that door."

"What about the wall?"

"Unless you happen to be carrying explosives with a temporal yield in that med-pack, there is no way into that room from out here."

"So what do we do now?"

"If she really does intend to use the Oubliette, then I would rather not be here."

Livia felt drained, wanting to let go of the gun, too afraid of the danger to do so. The President was on the other side of that door. The President was alive, and the President had sent her to Earth.

Romana had not even bothered to ask her. Did she believe that Livia would have refused her orders?

"It doesn't matter _where_ we are. Where anyone is," she said. "If she executes-"

"Not unless one has possession of a TARDIS," the Master told her. "And hopes for the best with whatever effect there is on causality. He does tend to get involved rather a lot."

"The Doctor's TARDIS is back on Earth, underwater…there's no time to… " Livia looked back at the door. "But," she continued, "she'd need Gallifreyan technology to construct the Oubliette."

"Precisely," said the Master, producing his scanner from a pocket.

"Didn't Captain Harkness have that?"

"He did," confirmed the Master. "But I don't imagine he needs it now."

"If she's kept her TARDIS, surely it would be with her, in there?"

"Not if she actually intends to use the Oubliette, the temporal interference would not allow it to function properly…ah! Here it is."

Livia joined the Master, looked at the scanner readout. "Six levels down."

"Then I suggest we go immediately. Even the Doctor cannot keep talking forever."

They ran.

But despite his words, the Master paused at the end of the corridor, taking one last look back at the sealed door.

* * *

"Doctor, what's she talking about? What's she going to do?" Rose struggled to her feet, took a step forward.

"Stay back, Miss Tyler," warned Romana.

Rose paid no attention, reached for the Doctor. The flash of red from the blaster knocked her back.

And the air rippled between them. The Doctor started forward, pushing uselessly against the force-field Romana had activated between him and Rose. "Jack!"

He held Rose, looked desperately at the Doctor. "She's not breathing."

Turned, not thinking. Turned and struck out at Romana.

But she said nothing, merely caught him with her cybernetic arm, held him back. "You can still save her, Doctor," she said quietly.

He stilled, and she let him go. Pushed him back off the platform. "How?"

"My first duty is, and always as been, to my people, Doctor. And if I can put right the damage that has been done, then I must, by any means necessary."

"More killing."

"Just once more, Doctor. It gets easier. But you'd know all about that wouldn't you? And without you there'll be no-one to send to Skaro. No-one to destroy that planet. No-one to start this war and no-one to finish it."

"Time abhors a vacuum. There'll be someone else in my place."

Romana shook her head. "There's never been anyone quite like you, Doctor. And now there never will." She stepped back, one hand reached out for the control console. "Gallifrey is gone, Skaro is gone, Earth is falling and thousands upon thousands of worlds were washed away in our war. How many lives did the Time War take? How many did it steal?"

"This is _wrong_, Romana. What you are doing, what you are about to do, it is wrong."

She nodded. "But I won't know."

"That makes it alright?" Vitriol, acid spat at her. "You've killed an entire world just to get to me!"

"And now I save it." She gestured, her arms spread. That room, her creation. "The Oubliette will take only you. Erase you from the time-stream. Every action, and inaction. Every life you've ever touched will be rendered innocent again. You'll be dispersed, and there'll be no record of it ever happening. Our world will be safe; Earth will be safe."

"And Skaro?"

"You were entwined with the history of the Daleks. Perhaps, without you, it will take a less destructive course."

"You can't know that!"

"Of course not. But I do know what exists now. I walk in the ashes of my civilisation."

"Then let it go, Romana. Everything dies, everything. People, worlds, stars. They burn out, and decay. All of them. Even Gallifrey."

"But that was never your decision to make. It was not our time, but you took the easy way out. Sacrifice a people to save-"

"Causality! The same causality that you're risking now if you go through with this."

She arched an eyebrow. "Arrogant as ever, Doctor. You are _not_ the defining event of causality."

"You're mad."

"Doctor, this is the only thing I can do." She could not look away from him. She was pleading. "Isn't it better this way?"

"I won't salve your conscience."

"It's one life for billions, Doctor. One life for countless civilisations."

"You don't know that; you have no idea what will happen."

"Then it is a life for a life," she said. "Your life for hers." And she pointed a thin finger over the Doctor's shoulder, to Jack cradling Rose. He looked at the Captain; he looked at Rose. "She's dead, Doctor."

"No…"

"She is dead. And she would have been alive, but for you."

"It changes nothing," he said. His voice did not break. It did not.

Romana nodded. "I thought it might be a comfort to you. But comfort or no, she will have her life given back to her." Her hand grasped the lever on the console, the Gallifreyan console connected to the Gallifreyan machine. The Doctor stood tall; the Doctor was not afraid. "I play god now, Doctor. And I will remake the universe without your image."

There was no last minute reprieve. No last second, nor nanosecond, nor any other denomination of time.

Romana pulled the lever.

And the universe held its breath.

* * *

The tapestry unfurls, a great thread taken from it.

It will take - ah, forgive my use of the word - it will take _time_ to reform and who knows what image it will take? A universe without the Doctor…

…and yet, one with such an influence, one who binds so many of the threads around him - twists and knots them to his own - surely that influence must remain somehow, somewhere? Can the universe really forget so very easily?

And Earth was his favourite planet, after all.

Perhaps someone, somehow, will remember.

But, listen, there is my sister calling. She has souls to reap and it would be churlish of me to deny her her pleasures. For though Time and tide wait for no man, Death will wait for me.

So here is your coat, your hat and your scarf. It is cold outside and I would not have you catch a chill. Here, take a playing piece to remind you of today - a knight, perhaps, or a bishop - though, had it been but chess, our time together would have been over so much more quickly.

Go back to your television, your job, your school. Back to your cups of milky tea and your beans on toast. Back to your life, wherever, whatever it may be. Until we meet again, dear friend, take care.

It was a good game though, wasn't it? 


End file.
